Laurel woke up to a pounding head, and a bitter taste in her mouth. Sitting up, she spotted a bottle of water and Tylenol on her nightstand. It was nine thirty in the morning, she couldn't believe she slept so late then again, she couldn't believe her own actions. It was almost unfortunate that she didn't drink enough to black out; she'd love nothing more than to be oblivious of her actions. No, she was not that lucky. She remembered everything, from picking up wine, going to the bar, Felicity coming to get her, and putting her to bed.
Felicity, she didn't know her very well so she shouldn't feel embarrassed, but she did. She crossed the line with someone who was a little more than a stranger. What would Felicity think of her now? They had a deal, one that she broke. Would she be able to continue on her search without her? Felicity was the one with the information, and the computer skills. Still, if push came to shove, she was sure she could manage on her own.
Getting up, she hoped she had coffee. She couldn't remember if that was on her list of things to buy. As she walked to her kitchen she heard someone humming, and was instantly alarmed. Why was Felicity still here?
She wasn't ready to deal with what happened last night, or get lectured by someone she barely knew.
Felicity's back was to her, so she stepped into the kitchen quietly knowing she wouldn't go unnoticed, but hoping she'd be ignored.
"I brewed a pot of coffee, and I ran down to the store and got some bagels and cream cheese. I only got plain because I didn't know what you liked." She heard Felicity say from behind her.
Bracing herself for the oncoming lecture, she turned around to face her. "Umm, thanks." She said.
Felicity emptied the cup she was holding and washed it out. "I have to go home, shower and change, but I'll be back afterwards. I think I got a hit on Wintergreen, I'm running a few more searches but they'll take a while. By the time I'm back they should be finished." Felicity told her, drying the cup and putting it back in the cabinet.
Laurel was surprised that she didn't bring up the incident from the night before, she wanted to feel relieved, but she felt rejection.
Instead of leaving it alone and moving on, she decided to tackle the problem head on.
"Thank you." She muttered, focusing her attention to Felicity's nose, not wanting to meet her eyes. " You didn't have to come get me last night, you could have called my dad, but you didn't. I'm sorry I broke my promise."
"Laurel, we don't really know each other very well, but it's not me you broke a promise to… It was to yourself. I know it's not my place to give you advice, and you don't have to listen to it, but it may be good for you to speak to someone. I know meetings are a big step, but you owe it to yourself to at least consider it. Besides, I would've hated it if someone called my father, not that I've seen him since I was six, so it never crossed my mind."
"Felicity," Laurel interrupted. "Really, thank you."
"You're welcome." She said, giving her a small smile. "I'll see you in a couple hours."
Laurel watched her walk out, and locked the door behind her.
Felicity threw herself down on her couch as soon as she got home. She wasn't sure if the tension in her neck was from Laurel's couch, or the drama from the night before. She vaguely remembered overhearing Oliver and Sara talk about Laurel's drinking problem, not that it deterred them from being together.
This wasn't the first time she dealt with someone with alcohol dependency. Her mother had those same demons; she just had no interest in changing. She could see that Laurel wanted to stop, but she didn't think she had accepted the fact that it was a real issue.
Getting up she grabbed her cell phone, she needed to touch base with Oliver and Diggle. She knew nothing major had been going on because they would have called her.
"The foundry isn't the same without you," Diggle said as a greeting.
Felicity smiled, he always knew how to cheer her up. "Yeah, well, my life isn't as interesting when you're not around."
"So are you calling because you're coming back?" He asked, hopefully.
Felicity let out a breath, she felt guilt keeping Diggle out of the loop. "Dig, I'm just taking a few days vacation then I'll be back. You guys can survive another couple days."
"Yeah, but everything is just brighter when you're around."
"Alright, you're laying it on a little thick now. How are things going? Is there anything you need my help with?" She asked hoping the answer would be no.
"Nah, things have been pretty quiet. Sara and Oliver have spent their nights patrolling. What have you been up to?"
"Umm… not much actually. I've just been catching up with my DVR, and hanging out at home, relaxing."
"That sounds nice. So you haven't done anything interesting or fun? I don't know, maybe met up with friends, go dancing?" He asked. Felicity could hear a little suspicion in his voice.
"Nope. It's just been Felicity time."
"Were you having Felicity time last night?"
"What's up with the twenty questions?"
"Nothing, it's just that I passed by your place last night, with some mint chip, but you weren't home. I even waited like twenty minutes to see if maybe you had just run to the store."
"Shit. Sorry. A friend had a little too much to drink last night, and I went to get her. I ended up crashing at her place."
"Too bad. Here I thought maybe you were out having a little fun, but were embarrassed to tell me."
"Dig, I've forgotten what fun feels like, I'll let you know when I meet it again."
"I preferred if you didn't." He chuckled.
"Look, I have to run, but I'll talk to you soon. Can you tell Oliver I'll catch up with him later? I was going to call him but I'm running behind on some errands."
"No problem, have a good day."
"You too."
By the time Felicity got back to Laurel's place more than three hours had passed. She decided not to bring up the drinking, for the time being. It wasn't really her place, and she wanted to wait things out, see if it happened again. Once they were finished with their project, she'd pull Laurel aside and offer her help.
She was relieved to see Laurel looking more refreshed and clear minded, than she was earlier. She didn't think Laurel would bring up last night's events, and she wasn't planning to.
"So," Laurel began, closing the door behind her, "you never told me what information came up."
"Well, I didn't have it all this morning," she told her, taking a seat, and pulling up her searches. "So this morning my program caught another transaction. This one was older, from a year ago. Like Donner's transaction, it was a deposit into a trust fund. All it turned up was an account number, so I ran another program hoping to get more information."
Laurel took the seat beside her and looked at her screen. "Did the new search turn up anything?" She asked, not even trying to decipher Felicity's coding.
"It did. The trust account was set up in Australia, for one Rose Wilson. I'll have to use some international channels to get more information." She explained.
Laurel's eye widened when Felicity opened the next screen. "Interpol? Felicity hacking is a federal offense, hacking a government agency is suicidal."
"Relax. They'll never know I was here… Plus, it's not like this is my first time. I mean- not that I hack into government agencies, all the time… or ever. This is a special case." Felicity explained getting flustered.
Laurel let out a chuckle at Felicity's nervousness. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."
"Damn." Felicity muttered.
"What's wrong?" Laurel asked, hoping they haven't reached another dead end.
"Rose Wilson is not in the Interpol database, so either she's a really good criminal and hasn't been caught, or she's a Donner type of employee." She explained, speaking more to herself than Laurel. "Let me just run a search for Australian residents."
Laurel watched her get into a zone. Felicity's fingers were flying across her keyboard and her forehead was creased in concentrating. It reminded Laurel of the ways she prepared for a case. She lived, breathed, and ate her work, until she felt she had all her ducks in line.
"This might take a while," Felicity told her. "I mean, I'm sure there must be more than one Rose Wilson in all of Australia."
"Can't you get any more information from the trust account? I mean like a city, it would help narrow it down."
"If it were a normal trust, then yes. However, the trust has no valid information besides the name, assuming it's a real name. When I check the address, it didn't exist. The information on the lawyer that set it up has been scrubbed away. So someone paid a lot of money to keep this hidden."
"Well, I guess it's a good thing that we have you." Laurel said.
The praise surprised Felicity, and made her smile. "Thanks. I think between the two of us we can get to the bottom of this."
"Well, here is the list of all the Rose Wilson's in Australia. Hmm, there are only a couple thousand of them." She said, dread filling her voice.
"Can you narrow them down by city?" Laurel asked, having no desire to sort through thousands.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't know where to start." She explained.
"Well, why don't you try the city from the fake address? I mean, it may turn up nothing but, sometimes people make dumb little mistakes." Laurel hoped that would be the case here. If they didn't figure out a way of narrowing the Rose's down, they'd be at this forever.
"Okay, narrowing them down by people who live in Perth." Felicity waited as a few more screens opened up. "Okay, there are a couple hundred, let's remove the deceased."
Laurel was trying to piece together what they knew to help them out. "Felicity, what about the account number, what bank was it?"
"I already searched the bank, no Rose Wilson in their system. The only reason I even found the name, was because whoever scrubbed the information, didn't do the best job." She said somewhat smugly. "If I were to guess, the info was removed a few years ago, they used a dated coding method. Just that they left a trail, proves they weren't at the top of their game."
"This really is your calling, huh?" Laurel asked.
"Computers, unlike people, are uncomplicated. When something breaks on them I know how to fix it. I spent a lot of my time growing up fixing and breaking computers."
"Sounds lonely," Laurel said. Her family may have fallen apart, but before that she had a sister, and her parents. There was never the chance to be lonely.
"It wasn't so bad. I had friends; I wasn't picked on at school or ignored by boys. I just liked having some me time, and my mother isn't the easiest person to get along with."
"Yeah, I can see that. When I was in law school, the last thing I wanted was to be around anyone. I spent most of my time alone. I was really focused on getting good grades."
"Well, you just described my life. I worked my ass off and put myself through MIT. There was no way I was remaining in Vegas, there was nothing for me there."
"You're from Vegas?" She asked, she didn't know why, but she was surprised to hear that.
"Originally from Coast City, after my dad left mom moved us to Vegas." Felicity's computer beeped, drawing her attention back to it.
"Who is that?" Laurel asked, pointing to the photo that came up on her screen.
"I ran a search for any Rose Wilson with political connections. You know, just in case Wintergreen has a type. Only one result came up, and I'm pretty sure this is our girl."
"Okay, but who is that guy?" Laurel asked.
"This is Slade Wilson, he comes up as Rose Wilson's father. He was a member of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, he and his partner went missing on a mission six years ago. They were presumed dead."
"What makes you think this is connected to Wintergreen?"
"His partner's name was William Wintergreen. That's not all of it though, I've heard this name before. The Arrow mentioned him once, but he was under the impression he was dead." Felicity told her, trying not to give too much away.
Laurel thought about it for a moment, it didn't really make sense to her. "So William Wintergreen is still alive."
Felicity couldn't tell Laurel what she knew, she couldn't break Oliver's trust. "No. I think Slade Wilson is alive, from what I've been told, he hated the Arrow. I don't know anything about his partner, he never mentioned him."
"Okay," Laurel began, not quite understanding. "If this guy hates the Arrow, why use Blood and Donner? That doesn't seem to be the best way to get to him, as far as I know, neither of the two support him."
"Whoever the man behind the mask really is, he was injecting people with the serum. Why would someone need super soldiers? This is more than just human testing.''
"He's creating an army." Laurel finished.
If Slade Wilson is alive, she had to let Oliver know. As discreetly as possible she copied the information, and sent an encrypted copy to Diggle. She wasn't able to write anything, but in the subject line she managed to type: Still Alive.
"Laurel, I know you're not going to like this but I think we need to contact the Arrow." Felicity told her.
"I know. It's just, don't you think we should get more proof that he is still alive before involving him?" She asked.
"I don't think we should wait. If he is alive, and he is recruiting an army of juiced up guys, then I think we need to get in front of this."
"Yeah, you're right." She conceded.
Felicity got up to grab her phone from her purse. She was walking into the dinning room when the front door was smashed open.
"Oh my god," she muttered at seeing Slade Wilson in the doorway.
"Felicity, are you okay? What was - "
"Laurel run," Felicity shouted following her down the hall to her room.
"Come on," Laurel yelled, grabbing onto her arm slamming the bedroom door and locking it. "Open the window we'll go down the fire escape," she ordered. She reached under her bed and grabbed her shotgun.
Slade broke through the locked door with little effort. The moment he walked through, Laurel took a shot. The impact pushed him back but he got back up.
"Silly girl with a gun, that won't stop me." He said full of laughter.
Laurel shot again, hitting him square in the chest, again he was pushed back.
Felicity struggled with the stuck window but got it open, "lets go."
Laurel walked backwards and took another shot as she exited through the window. The two ran down the escape and were making their way down the ally. Right as they reached the main street, they both felt a shock go through them, and collapsed.
Sorry about the wait. I had a terrible cold and was out of commission for almost three weeks. Once I was better, I had to catch up with real-life. I meant to have this up on Wednesday, but unfortunately some things came up. This chapter didn't get its normal amount of editing, I gave it a once over. If anything looks funny, please let me know. I'll probably edit it a bit more this week, but I wanted to get it up for you guys.
Thank you guys, for the reviews I'm glad you're enjoying the fic. For you Laurel fans, I have a new story that is just Laurel centric. It's a one-shot at the moment, and it will serve as a prologue to the main story. Like I said it's a Laurel fic, so no Arrow characters except Sara. A few people asked if this will be Olicity, there will be moments later, I don't know if it will be enough Olicity for you guys. The main relationship here is the friendship between Felicity and Laurel, anything else is a B or C plot. Hope that answers your questions.
There is only one thing I want to bring up, and I don't know if it's a result from this fic or my new Laurel-centric one. I've received a few angry anon messages on tumblr, because I ship Olicity, and am writing about Laurel. Let me be clear, because I like one does not mean I have to hate the other, that's not how life works. These are fictional people and this is my story. If you don't enjoy my writing then please don't read it. But I like Laurel and Felicity, and I like those two together - so deal with it. I know it's probably on person trolling me, but I wanted to make this clear. Sorry about the rant guys.