(A/N: Thanks for hanging in there! I hope this chapter is worth the wait. ;-) )
Chapter 21-Worth It All
"Captain."
He wasn't a creepy-looking man. THere was nothing about him that screamed "I am Felicity Smoak's nemesis." But he was in her home, uninvited, the man who was the primary reason she'd traded her safe job in front of a computer in Internal Affairs for standing over dead bodies with Detective Lance in Major Crimes.
"What brings you here? Without knocking?" Felicity asked.
She was trying to sound annoyed yet unconcerned, but her heart pounded so fast, she was afraid he'd see it through her pajama top.
"Four months, Smoak." He took a step toward her, scrubbing a hand across his scalp. "Four months, and I don't hear a word from you."
"It's called 'burning bridges,'" said Felicity.
Captain Grifton moved fast, but she was quicker. She put herself between him and the end table where she kept her backup gun.
"I'd expect a little gratitude."
"Gratitude?" she scoffed. "I liked my job. I loved my job. Sure, no one would talk to me because I was I.A., but I always preferred computers to people anyway. But because of you, I had to leave." As she spoke, Felicity edged closer to the end table. "Now I look at dead bodies instead of data on screens, and I'm happy doing it because you're not there."
"You have to make everything difficult, don't you?"
Grifton stepped right into her personal space and grasped her arms. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. Felicity kneed him in the groin. As he bent over in pain, releasing her arms, she hit him in the nose with the heel of her hand. It gave way with a satisfying crunch.
He was on his knees, clutching at his face. Without turning her back on him, Felicity opened the drawer and withdrew her gun. It was small, just a .22 designed for concealed carry, but it would do plenty of damage at close range.
"Get out," she said, low and firm.
He got to his feet but couldn't stand up straight, thanks to her groin shot.
"I said get out." Keeping her gun trained on him, Felicity used her free hand to fling open the door. It smacked against the wall, revealing a confused Oliver Queen, his fist raised to knock.
Grifton scoffed, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve. "Friends in high places, huh? Well, I've got friends too. You'll lose your badge for this, Smoak."
"And it'd be worth it. Tell that to your friends," Felicity spat.
He limped out, pushing past Oliver. Felicity clicked the safety back on and returned her gun to the end table. WIping sweaty palms on her yoga pants, she looked up at Oliver.
"Come in, I guess. Make yourself at home," she said shakily. "I'm going to go throw up or something."
"Felicity-"
She turned her back on him and went into the kitchen. He followed her but didn't speak as she braced her arms on the counter and stared into the sink for a minute. Then she burst into action, opening and closing cabinets, rummaging through them. She came up with a bottle of wine-red, mid-priced, nothing fancy-and poured a generous measure into the lumpy, melty-looking goblet she'd made on an ill-fated glassblowing tour in college.
"I'd offer you some, but you'd have to drink it out of a Star Trek mug." She turned around.
"I can deal with Star Trek," he said. He was smiling a little, but his eyes were full of concern.
Felicity poured more wine and handed him the mug. She gulped down a big swallow of her own before she began.
"I pulled some shady stunts in college," she said. "Joining the SCPD was sort of my way of atoning for that. My degrees are in cyber-security and information technology, and the captain of Cybercrimes was falling all over himself to lure me to the department.
"I spent two years in Cybercrimes, drawing out pedophiles, which is just as much fun as it sounds. I took two showers a day, but there wasn't enough hot water in the world to make me feel clean again. The day my transfer went through, I went down to the Glades and shoved my old uniform into some homeless guy's trash barrel fire. Buying a new one was worth every penny."
"And that guy was . . .," Oliver prompted.
"My new boss when I transferred," she said. "I was a tech specialist for Internal Affairs, and he offered to mentor me." She laughed bitterly. "What he really meant was that he wanted to ogle my breasts and try to feel me up."
"'Try to'?"
Felicity nodded. "He never got anywhere. I made it a point to never be alone with him, and I talked a lot about all the martial arts classes I was taking."
"Were you actually taking them?" Oliver asked.
"Oh, hell yeah. Mama Smoak didn't raise no fool." She grimaced. "Wow, that was a tragic grammar slip. But somehow it's not the same without the double negative." She slid onto one of the stools at the counter and took another healthy sip from her sad wineglass. "I stuck it out for a year. Worked my cute little butt off."
His lips turned up at that.
"I did tech on cases for anyone who asked," she continued. "And for people who didn't. Anything that came into the department, I'd look into it and see if my services could be useful."
"How did you get access to all of that?" The little wrinkle in the middle of his forehead that deepened whenever he was trying to figure something out was kind of adorable.
"Oh, please," she said. "After everything I've done for you, you're questioning my computer prowess?"
Oliver set down his Captain Spock mug and raised his hands in surrender.
"Anyway, I helped solve a lot of cases. The department's clearance rate went way up, and word started getting around that I had something to do with it . . . What?"
He was fully smiling now. "Nothing. Just . . . You, the star of the SCPD."
"Yeah. Hilarious," she said sarcastically.
"It's not hilarious. It's-it doesn't surprise me at all."
He sipped his wine. Felicity didn't understand why he looked more at ease standing in her kitchen, drinking cheap-ish red wine out of a Star Trek mug, than he did at the Christmas party in his own home, surrounded by family and friends.
"What does surprise me is that you put up with the harassment for so long," Oliver said. "That doesn't seem like you."
"Being a woman in the police department isn't like being a woman in a private company. Or anywhere else, really," she added. "I wanted to keep my job, and it's not like he ever actually touched me."
That wasn't strictly true. He'd done that phenomenally creepy shoulder-rub thing a few times, but Oliver didn't need to know that. He had actually killed people, and whenever the subject drifted back to Captain Grifton, he got a look she could only describe as "murder face."
"Anyway, it's over," she said. "I closed enough cases to write my own ticket to Major Crimes. I can handle him."
"Yeah, you can." Oliver's voice sounded rough, but also sort of . . . proud. "But I don't like to see him get away with what he's done. It was bad enough that standing over dead bodies every day looked like the better option."
"He's not getting away with anything," said Felicity. "I did a little harassing of my own. Electronically. Just to drive home the point."
He gave her a quick smile, then looked down, and it was then that she noticed how tired he looked. Tired and burdened, more so than usual. He was pale, and there were shadows under his eyes.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "Your mom must be frantic about Mr. Steele, and I saw that fire on the news."
Oliver's head snapped up. "What fire?"
"The one they're saying was arson. The one the Hood was spotted at a couple nights ago. You weren't hurt, were you?"
He was on his feet immediately, ready to face a threat. His eyes were alive and snapping with energy.
"I'm brilliant," she said. "Of course I'd figure it out."
All the breath left his body in one big rush, and he sank back against the counter. "Of course."
"Maybe I'd have known it sooner if I was objective about it, but I've met you. I've spent time with you-a little bit-and you don't seem like a scary vigilante. You seem so different."
She was just barely able to stop herself from finishing the thought: You seem so different with me.
You seem so different.
Felicity discovering his identity wasn't much of a surprise, really. She was brilliant. Oliver knew he was lucky she hadn't guessed sooner.
Dig thought they should prepare for the possibility of Felicity tipping off her fellow cops, but Oliver wasn't worried about that. He trusted her. He had from Day One, from the moment she tilted her head to let him know she saw through his bullshit story.
You seem so different.
Oliver had waited a moment before looking at her, bracing himself for disgust, or worse, disappointment. Instead, he saw confusion mixed with curiosity, a pressing need to understand.
She knew.
Felicity knew he was a killer. She'd stood over some of the bodies. She knew, and she hadn't pushed him out the door. She'd taken his hand, turned it over and traced the lines on his palm. Wholly absorbed, as if she could read in his skin answers to all the questions buzzing in her mind. This hand had crushed the life out of creatures big and small, animal and human. She knew at least some of that, and still she trusted him.
He was beginning to think it was almost worth five years of hell to have Felicity Smoak in his life.