Author's Note: Sorry about that cliffhanger last chapter, but thanks to the comments and follows:) Read on to see what happens!
Oh crap, crap, crap, crap, and any other bodily excretions that aren't coming to mind. That was the only thought my panicking brain could come up with after seeing the rather unfriendly weapon pointed in my direction. Whoever Tall, Shadowy, and Huge was, he wasn't messing around. Unfortunately for me, Oliver and I hadn't yet reached the portion of my self-defense lessons that covered how to react when the person attacking you had a gun pointed at your brains. So instead of reacting like Oliver would have wanted, I just stood there with my mouth gaping open like a fish gasping at air on dry land.
"You really shouldn't have gone looking into things that were none of your business," the accented voice sounded in the dark again once he was satisfied I wouldn't be putting up much of a fight. I guess the lack of struggle gave him extra time to gloat. "Now that you've gone digging into things that were better left alone, we'll have to put an end to it."
His use of the word "we" reached through my subconscious far enough to break through the flood of panic that was currently threatening to override my senses. "Who's 'we'?" I questioned aloud before I had even realized the words had left my mouth. I absently wondered after the words were spoken, if questions merited the same terrifying consequences as screams.
Apparently they did, because instead of taking the polite approach of answering my question, the hulking shadow started moving closer towards me. Without even thinking (I was so getting an F from Oliver in self-defense), I turned and ran down the walk as fast as my legs would carry me. Maybe the resulting panic from the sight of that gun closing in had overtaken the more sensible portion of my brain, making me think that somehow I could outrun a bullet all the way to the bus stop down the street.
Despite the prospect of an imminent death, my feet refused to give up the race away from the waiting bullet at my back, continuing to pound down the pavement at a quick speed borne of adrenaline and bone-chilling fear. I really shouldn't have been surprised when my ears were met with the sound of a muted shot somewhere close behind me. I kept running but squeezed my eyes shut in anticipation of the biting pain that would soon accompany the fired bullet. It never came. Instead, I saw a hand appear in front of me out of the dark, and it promptly shoved me to the concrete at my feet, bringing my progress to a complete halt.
I threw my hands in front of me to break the fall and sucked in a hiss of pain when the rough surface tore at the tender skin of my hands as I made contact with the ground. It took a moment for me to get my bearings, but once my brain had adjusted to the new location, I glanced up to find an irate vigilante looking down at me with a look that would make the most hardened criminal cower in fear. I was only comforted by the fact that I knew the anger wasn't directed at me.
"Stay there, Felicity," the order came tersely worded in the vigilante's low, garbled voice. He didn't take the time to see if I would obey the order before sprinting off the way I had come, pursuing my attacker.
After seeing the anger in his eyes, I wasn't the least bit tempted to disobey the order and sat in my undignified position on the uncomfortable asphalt for what seemed like an eternity. I wasn't really a religious person by any means, but I might have shot up a silent prayer to whatever deity floated up there in the sky while I waited for Oliver to come back. My agonizing wait came to an end several minutes later when he finally returned.
"Oh, thank God," I moaned, not even attempting to stand as I slumped down even further in relief.
Oliver didn't make any response to that. He just reached out to grab my cold hand and yank me to my feet again. When I was eventually in an upright position, he reached out both hands to cradle my face before running his eyes up and down me in a thorough inspection. He still wasn't saying anything, and not able to stand the tense silence, I spoke again to break it. "Did you find anything?"
He looked up from examining my scraped palms to give me a grim look. "He was gone by the time I took after him. I haven't seen anyone who could move that fast since…"
I raised my brows as I waited for him to finish the thought, but the words never came. I looked into his eyes then and, even in the dim light of the lone streetlamp, could see the faraway look that indicated Oliver's mind wasn't in Starling City anymore. It was someplace in the past. "Oliver," I reached up one hand to touch his fingers that still cradled my cheek, attempting to draw his mind back to the present with me.
"Sorry," he mumbled when the distant look finally cleared, snapping his attention back to the task at hand. "I need to get you out of here."
With that, he turned abruptly and latched onto one my dangling hands to pull me along through the dark. As he hurried me along the sidewalk and into a darkened alley, I trailed after him eyeing the path he had chosen as our escape route with a skeptical eye. "You don't expect me to climb these walls after you," I stated more than questioned when we stopped at a dead end.
"No," he answered absently as he unhooked something from his belt. "I expect you to hang on."
With that, I felt a strong arm lock securely around my waist before yanking me to Oliver's muscled chest. The next thing I knew, the ground was suddenly gone from underneath my feet. I resisted the urge to let out a shriek of surprise and instead buried my face against his chest in order to shield my eyes from the sight of the ground shrinking away. Finally, the upward momentum carrying us to the roof drew to a halt, but I didn't open my eyes until I felt the reassuring press of solid concrete underneath my feet once more.
"You're probably going to want to close those again," Oliver informed me, before scooping me up as if I weighed no more than a feather and taking of at a breakneck speed over the rooftops of Starling City. As he quickly approached the edge of the roof, it was then that I realized he meant to keep going in order to jump to the adjoining rooftop. I closed my eyes like he predicted, returning to my former position of burying my head against his chest. I almost imagined I could hear the sound of a low, rumbling laugh beneath my ear as he continued to run and leap along the roofs of the city.
It amazed me that he could maneuver so easily across the tops of the buildings, toting a terrified IT girl with him no less, but in record time, he finally came to a stop, letting my body slide down until I was standing next to him on a pair of rather shaky legs. When I opened my eyes, I was shocked to find we were standing on a deserted street next to the shiny sports car that I had come to miss so much in the past few days.
"How?" I turned to ask him, but he didn't bother to give an answer.
Instead, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the passenger's seat in a silent order for me to get in. I didn't waste any time obeying, and soon he had slid in the driver's seat at my side. He quickly snatched the green hood from his head before revving the engine and tearing off at his usual neck-break speed. Due to my eagerness to get away from the darkened streets of Starling, I didn't bother to make a comment about his terrifying choice of speed. Instead, I asked the question that had been on my mind since he intercepted my would-be-attacker back by the alley.
"How did you know I was in trouble?"
Oliver shot me an impatient glance before jerking his gaze back to the road to zoom around a pokey Volkswagen. "I've followed you home every night since you started working for Stellmoor. I was afraid something like this might happen."
There was something in the i-told-you-so tone of his voice that set my nerves back on edge. "You don't think it was someone from Stellmoor do you?"
Oliver spared a fraction of a second to take his concentration off the road again to shoot me an exasperated look. "I'm not sure who tried to shoot you, but you're no longer safe working undercover if someone's found out your real identity."
"But- you- you can't do that!" I sputtered in frustration at his statement that my undercover stint had gone kaput. "I'm so close to decrypting that program! You have to let me finish!"
"We're not talking about this right now, Felicity," Oliver's hard-edged tone put a quick end to my argument, and from looking at the stubborn set of his jaw, I realized that now was not the time to continue the discussion. So I just sat there fuming in silent disapproval the rest of the ride as Oliver continued weaving through the traffic.
When we reached our destination, Oliver slammed on the breaks and we jerked to a brisk stop. My head bounced softly against the leather headrest in response to the quick stop, and I had to reach up to adjust my glasses as Oliver hopped out and walked around to open the door on my side. When he helped me from the car, I looked at the building in front of us with a little gasp of surprise. I had been so busy trying to figure out how to get Oliver to let me finish my assignment at Stellmoor that I hadn't noticed where he had driven us.
"This is your house," I stated stupidly, looking at him for clarification.
That caused the hardened demeanor to crack just a bit, letting out the barest glimmer of a smile. "I already know that, Felicity."
I was still confused. "Why am I here?"
Oliver moved a gloved hand behind my back to hurry me towards the front entrance as he explained. "Someone tried to kill you, and just because I stopped them back there doesn't mean they won't try it again. And, Felicity," he braked to a halt for just a moment, forcing me to stop as well and look at him. The expression in those blue eyes was hardly comforting. "If they know who you are, they know where you live. Until this whole thing is cleared up, you're staying here with me. That way I won't have to worry about keeping an eye on you."
"How are we going to explain that to Thea?" I asked, spouting the first question that sprung to mind.
Oliver had recommenced with our trip inside by this point and just gave an indifferent shrug at the mention of his sister. "She's with Roy tonight, but we'll worry about that later."
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask about his mother, but thankfully I was able to stop that brain fart before it happened. With him already in a bad mood, there wasn't really any need to remind him that his mother was currently warming a jail cell. Instead, I silently followed him inside until we reached one of the front rooms and he deposited me on the couch there before striding to one of the side cabinets and pulling out a crystal decanter with an amber colored liquid sloshing around inside. Just as quickly, he produced a small glass and promptly filled it with the liquid before shoving the glass in my direction.
"Drink this," he ordered before pouring a glass for himself.
I eyed the potion suspiciously before taking a tentative sip. "Some ancient family remedy?" I questioned once the small sip had gone down, burning pleasantly as it settled into my stomach.
Oliver wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before slamming his empty glass down on an empty side table. "No, just liquor. You looked like you could use some."
It was my turn to smile at that. "A little liquor never hurt anybody, but I'm a total lightweight." I pushed the mostly full glass into his open hand. "Any more than that, and you'll have one very drunk IT girl on your hands."
Oliver regarded the glass in his hand for a brief moment before lifting it to his lips and swallowing the rest of its contents. I tried not to notice the way his throat worked as the sweet burning whiskey disappeared from the glass, but it was a bit difficult. Once he had finished the last few drops, he set the glass down with a soft thunk next to his abandoned cup from moments ago.
As soon as the glass was taken care of, he surprised me even further by quickly undoing the front of his green leather coat until it was gaping open, giving me a prime view of his abs underneath. I wasn't given much time to enjoy the sight before he pushed the jacket off his shoulders, exposing a nasty gash in his upper bicep that had gone unnoticed by me until that moment. "How good are you at cleaning up bullet wounds?" he asked with a tight smile.
"Oh, my God, Oliver!" I nearly shouted at him as I jumped up to inspect the bleeding tear in his upper arm. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
"There wasn't time," he waved off my concern.
I rolled my eyes at his obvious lack of concern for his own health. "Keep that liquor out," I said, nodding toward the decanter still sitting on the table. "Do you have anything we can wrap this in?"
His answer was to leave me standing there for a moment as he went in search of something. He came back in a minute with a roll of gauze and medical tape in his hands. "I still had some of this lying around."
"I'm not even going to ask why," I murmured before taking the offered supplies.
I had him sit on the couch in front of me as I started by pouring some alcohol over the open wound. He didn't even flinch. Stealing a glance at the different scars decorating the hard muscles on his abdomen, I felt my heart constrict painfully at the thought of how much pain he had been through to not even react to something as brutal as a bullet ripping through his skin. As my eyes traveled over the expanse of his chest to settle on one particularly brutal looking scar, I was surprised to find tears burning my eyes. I had seen the scars before of course, but I'd never really taken the time to think about how he'd gotten them. They'd looked kind of bad ass before, decorating the hard muscles of his physique to give him the appearance of a fearless warrior. But now, seeing them as I cleaned the wound on his arm, I was reminded of that mysterious look of pain that would flash through his eyes every once in a while and how these scars played some part in causing him that hurt.
Oliver was looking at my progress as I wrapped his arm in the white gauze, so he didn't see the sheen of unshed tears that glistened in my eyes in response to such a visual reminder of everything he had been through. I blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the unwelcome moisture before Oliver would see. I thought I could do it before he looked up to find me blubbering over him like a three year old, but I was horrified to see a stray tear escape my eyes before dripping down my nose and falling to splash just above the spot where I was finishing the wrap on his arm.
"Felicity?" Ollie looked up from the tiny puddle on his skin with a questioning look, but I couldn't stand to let him see the tears in my eyes. Embarrassed, I released his arm and walked to the window at the far side of the room, wiping furiously at the betraying wetness on my cheeks.
"Hey, Felicity," Oliver repeated, following after me and grasping both my shoulders once he reached the spot where I stood, moving me back to face him. "It's, ok," he tried to reassure me, squeezing my shoulders to give what amount of comfort he could offer. "You're safe now."
"It's not that," I sniffed, trying to get a grip on my rioting emotions. "I'm just sorry you got shot because of me, and I'm sorry that I got caught before I could decrypt that program, and that I didn't remember what you told me about reacting when someone attacks me, and – "
"Felicity, you don't have to be sorry," Oliver interrupted my endless stream of apologies.
I stopped sharply, looking up at his face in the soft light with a watery gaze. "But I am sorry, Oliver. About everything."
He didn't need me to say the words to know what I meant: the island, his father, his mom in prison, a best friend who died right in front of him. The pain that shimmered in his eyes was evidence enough that he understood what I meant. "You don't need to be sorry," he repeated again, his hands on my arms tightening almost painfully, but I hardly noticed. The tears that had slowed during my babbling speech, now trickled pitifully down my cheeks as I took in his haunted gaze.
"Oliver – " I began again, trying to find some words that would soothe the pain I had caused him with my tears. But the words I meant to say would have to be left unspoken. Because in that moment, Oliver Queen, billionaire playboy of Starling City and frequent star of my own personal fantasies, pulled me to him before suddenly covering my mouth with his and kissing me as if his life depended on it.
Beginning of the next chapter will be from Oliver's point of view (but just the beginning). Stay tuned and thanks for reading!