PART ONE: FAMILY VALUES
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE STRANGER
TEAM ARROW, STARLING CITY, USA
Oliver was astounded by Felicity's boldness and more astounded by how easily this Sam Winchester seemed to shoulder the idea of being an accused murderer. "The car belongs to your brother right?" Felicity asked, leading the way - heels clicking right up to her front door. Oliver had protested this but when Felicity had asked him just where it was he wanted to hold the meeting 'maybe a particular basement' - were her exact words, he shut up.
"Uh, yeah, it did."
"Oh, so what? Did he buy a new car or something?"
"Yeah, or something," he responded quietly, forcing a tight lipped smile. Oliver knew then that 'or something' was death but he wasn't about to point that out to Felicity.
"The murderer has a dead brother," whispered Diggle beside him, "you have to be pretty cold to kill your own brother."
"You know I can hear you right?" The tall, shaggy haired Sam Winchester said, pivoting to look at Oliver and Diggle. Most people would look away or apologize, but Oliver lifted his chin and looked him dead in the eye.
"That doesn't change my thoughts about you. You make a move to kill anyone in this city and I will personally take care of you myself." Oliver stepped forward menacingly and Sam moved to meet him, standing nearly nose to nose on Felicity's front doorstep. Killer to killer and yet Oliver hoped it would never come to that again.
"Ok, ok!" Felicity shouted, wedging herself between them. Oliver looked down to her stormy fierce gaze and he felt his resolve crumbling. "We need him Oliver, he might know what this thing is and I for one don't want a house visit from it!"
"She's got a point Oliver, that thing is capable of a lot more than we know," came Diggle's voice of reason. Oliver felt his jaw tense as the need to put this giant in his place grew stronger and stronger with each passing second. He wasn't sure that when all of this was through that Diggle and Felicity would be able to stop him from doing it.
"Oliver," Felicity whispered fiercely, snapping him out of his thoughts. He redirected his focus back to her. "Please don't kill each other!"
Images of Felicity cowering under a table in the Arrow base flashed back to him, the sight of blood running down her hands, it made his hair stand on end. Grudgingly he took a step back and Felicity seemed satisfied enough to step away and unlock the door. She turned to Sam and Oliver could see the exact moment she switched into geek mode flash across her features. He couldn't help but feel a little jealous, that switch generally dampened around him and for the first time he began to wonder if he should have finished school.
"So you're probably wondering why we've invited you here," she mused and Sam looked around at them tensely. Invited was hardly the right word but no one bothered to mention that to Felicity as she moved towards a desktop computer on the far side of the room and started firing it up.
"Yeah, it's crossed my mind."
"Something happened here in Starling City about a week ago, something we can't explain." They all eyed Sam cautiously, casting glances at each other intermittently, second guessing now if this was the right thing to do. To their further surprise, his shoulders seemed to relax and he let out a breath he hadn't let on to be holding.
"Oh," he laughed, "this is about the supernatural!" His laugh was a cross between force and actual relief. "All of this for a bump in the night? Damn, no wonder we never came here, you're a bunch of psychos!" he laughed, and then as if remembering something, the look slowly melted from his face.
"So you know what we're talking about then?"
"Well, yeah, that's what me an my brother do- did," he corrected himself, "we hunted down monsters to save people." Any tension that had been in the air dissolved and made way for shock.
"Monsters?" Diggle repeated, giving him a look of disbelief.
Sam sighed and turned back to Felicity, moving around the computer to look at the screens. "Nice setup," he murmured and Felicity glowed at the compliment and Oliver could see she was trying hard to hide her smile. She glanced up at Oliver as she leaned down to get a better look at the screen, her fingers flying wildly over the keys.
Oliver and Diggle stood back and watched, eyeing the stranger warily as Felicity worked her computer magic. "About a week ago my car was ransacked and destroyed," she started, slowly sinking down into the swivel chair as she became more and more entranced with whatever she had up on the display. "This is what I came out to find."
Sam leaned forward, his face nearing the screen in a fashion almost identical to Felicity. His features took on a serious look of concentration as he leaned deep into the desk. His eyebrows rose as he took in the images Felicity must have been showing him. "I'm going to need more than that, but I think... no, I can't be sure there's something about that..."
"Well, I did some research to try and figure it out myself." He looked at her doubtfully, but nodded all the same and she continued clicking away. "This is what I found."
Oliver watched in apprehension as he knew the images she was about to show him. As she started going through them he seemed to become more and more at ease, until with a final click she brought up what Oliver knew to be the news article. "Eventually I found this. So I figured if we found the killer, we'd find the way to kill this thing."
The air seemed to be sucked out of him as he let it all out in stress filled sigh and stood. They all watched impatiently for something to happen as he ran his hand hands over his face and into his hair. He glanced at the screen again "Madison," was all he said for a moment, "that was San Francisco wasn't it? That's what this is all about?" He looked at them each in turn, his hazel eyes accusing them of something ridiculous. "You broke into my motel room to ask me to help you kill a werewolf?" he shook his head in disbelief and an unamused laugh breached his lips.
"So she was the San Francisco Beast?" Felicity reasoned, straightening up and flashing Oliver a triumphant glance. He snorted and stepped away from the computer, clearly in his element now, his arms crossed over his chest and his shoulders relaxed.
"She was a beast of San Francisco, that much is true. From the pictures you just showed me your beast is likely a werewolf too- the beast of Starling City. But I think you're misunderstanding things-"
"Just tell us how to kill the meta-human," Oliver finally growled, sick of being the underdog in this situation. The fact that this stranger could waltz in and identify this creature in a matter of two minutes irked him beyond belief. Beyond that, the fact that he was able to kill this thing made the whole situation even more unbearable. He had hoped they would find him, but what he had really hoped was that he wouldn't give them any answers and he could be handed over to Starling City P.D. They could figure out a way to stop the beast themselves, surely.
Felicity frowned at Oliver's hostility and wasn't sure how to approach it. "I don't think he knows what a Meta-Human is Oliver..."
"Why? You think you can face this thing on your own, you just want me to let you walk into this unprepared?" The egos in the room were getting to be too much, so Felicity drew the attention back in, sharing a look with Diggle.
"I have one more video to show you of our - our werewolf," the room fell silent again and the stranger turned his glance towards the screen again, but never unfolded his arms from his chest. His eyebrows started to rise and Oliver finally felt a sliver of triumph at the man's look of disbelief. Finally, something he hadn't seen before.
"May I?" He asked, leaning right back in to the computer again, all indications of their previous argument gone. He navigated his way around the system with ease, not quite the same nonchalance that Felicity was able to manage but with more ease than Oliver himself could. Not able to bear not knowing what the guy was doing, Oliver moved around to stand behind them and look at the screen.
He had slowed and was playing a single clip over and over again of the man that had destroyed Felicity's car. What puzzled Oliver was that he wasn't looking at the shifting, but rather the moments before when the man looked around for reassurance no one was there. Oliver frowned but couldn't bite his question back any further.
"Why is this clip so important? He's just looking around." The giant shifted beside him and lifted a hand from the desk. He played the entire clip from the beginning, they watched the man come on screen and look around and then proceed with his unnerving body shifting.
"This, this is a normal werewolf shift - exactly what I expected to see. But - do you have a calendar?" he asked abruptly, turning to Felicity. She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen to return a moment later with a kitten calendar. The three men in the room stared at it and Sam chuckled as he flipped through it to the current month. "Here," he said, pointing to the calendar and even Diggle came around to see.
"What exactly are we supposed to be looking at?"
"The full moon, werewolves can only change on a full moon." The room went silent then, as they stared at the calendar. One thing was blatantly obvious, this wolf did not change on the full moon.
"So how can this werewolf shift when the full moon was six days earlier?" Diggle asked as their eyes wandered to the frozen image of the man mid-shift. Sam opened his mouth as if to say something and then closed it and shook his head. He leaned down again and brought the clip to the beginning again.
"This is the only thing that gets me thinking," he said, going through the video frame by frame until the man looked behind him, in the direction of the camera. "There, look at that!" He pointed to the screen, the man's eyes in particular.
"It's a retinal flare, low quality camera the light hits his eyes and they glow, what's so special about that?" Felicity asked, looking more than displeased with this explanation. Sam on the other hand look annoyed, dropping his head in half defeat before starting again.
"I might believe that if it happened to more than just him, look," he demanded, fast forwarding the clip until Oliver escorted Felicity back inside. They turned and Sam slowed the camera again, frame by frame they walked away towards the camera until they disappeared.
"No retinal flare," Felicity whispered, thoroughly intrigued now. "But what does that mean?" She asked, looking up over her shoulder to Sam. He stood up again, crossing his arms once more and surveyed them.
"Generally means you're looking at a Shapeshifter. So the question is, what the hell kind of mutated beast is this thing?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Shapeshifter? You mean like, like...?" Diggle struggled, it becoming more and more obvious that he was so far past disbelief he was thinking himself insane.
"Uh," Sam shrugged, trying to come up with the words, "Shapeshifter? It's a creature that's able to take on the appearance of whatever person it touches."
"So that's what it is then, a shapeshifter?"
"It's not that easy see, when a shapeshifter changes it sheds it's skin - literally. There should be a puddle of gelatin like flesh right where this guy shifted, but there isn't." Oliver tried to imagine it but it was a stretch he was sure. He had never heard of any meta-human that had done anything like that.
"So it's not possible he like touched a wolf or something?" Diggle asked, and Sam laughed.
"No, it doesn't work like that. Even if he touched another werewolf he wouldn't be able to actually turn, he'd just be another human on the street. Has there been a lot of missing people lately, an unusual spike?"
Felicity looked to Oliver and Sam followed her gaze. "What? You guys like run an underground kidnapping ring?"
"Hardly," Oliver responded coldly.
"No, there hasn't been a spike. The opposite really, crime's down in the city. A few disturbances here and there but that's about it." Felicity managed, but it was on the tip of her tongue. After keeping the secret for so long she couldn't figure out what it was about this guy that made her want to explain absolutely everything. She found herself becoming distracted 'it's Oliver's secret' repeating on a loop in her head. She couldn't blow this now.
"Could it be a meta-human then?" Diggle finally asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over them.
"I don't know what these meta-humans you keep talking about are, but I highly doubt it." Oliver glared at Sam and then turned to Felicity and said the last thing he wanted to say in the given situation.
"Call Barry Allen, find out if they've seen anything like this. In the mean time, you and I need to talk. I know a place." Sam nodded and followed as Oliver led the way back out to the road.
A/N- Firstly, I think I should get a lollipop for actually getting this up on time! But besides that I'm actually so stoked about this fic! I love seeing all these characters interacting together, which I really wasn't sure about at the beginning so please continue to let me know what you think!