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Having wallowed in darkness for longer than she’d been able to take note of, with only the sound of her own voice and what the Egyptians called ‘bewitched ear’ and modern – well as modern as the last time she knew the date – medicine called tinnitus, to keep her company. She’d screamed for a time. Long after the police she’d managed to alert left Damien’s office with their proverbial tails between their legs, an idiom not used in her time, but one Felicity felt was apt for the occasion. They’d been relentless in their search, going so far to upend furniture and drill holes in the walls, as they searched the imprisoned woman who’d reached out to them via the department’s newly setup computer system.
They found nothing, of course. And truthfully Felicity should have known better. No one, save her captor had ever been able to hear her. All her wailing and thrashing had gone unnoticed by the policemen in the room. Damien heard; his furious gaze had her scratching at her confines, hoping against hope that somehow, someway she’d be perceived.
The dark magic of her prison held, to her would-be rescuers she was but a staid painting on the wall.
A glitch. That’s what the lone detective among the officers said in tacit apology when it their efforts found no evidence of woman or clandestine hiding spot.
She’d screamed herself hoarse and in the first flush of quiet after the police left her ears ringing. Damien said nothing, though his wrathful glower promised retribution. Even as she was packed away the following day, he remained silent, though Felicity felt a bone deep chill pulsing off him as he oversaw the process. When the darkness first settled and she lost connection to the room that had housed her for past few years she bit her tongue, refusing to give Damien any sense of her despair.
Minutes, to hours, to days … it had to be well over week, nearer to a fortnight, Felicity gauged before she cracked. Shrieking at the top of her lungs she cursed Damien like she had when he’d first trapped her. Sentenced to an endless darkness for a moment of -- could she call the hope of escape a weakness? Once again, the monster had her questioning what she’d done to deserve her fate.
It was only moments after succumbing to her dark thoughts that Felicity felt the weightless sensation that implied movement, but it wasn’t to open her enclosure. In her solitude she could only speculate. Given the length of time she felt in motion she was certain she no longer resided within the four walls of Damien’s office. The multiple lifts she felt indicated that she was beyond his home, and where past that she could be, there was no way to know. Not in the unending void that surrounded her. Left closed in and unhung, her limited connection to the outside world was severed.
She was alone, left with nothing to ground her. Felicity spun in and out of herself, losing her mind – or so it felt – over and over again after battling to reclaim it. Was it any wonder she missed the shift? With all sensation long forgot, how could she know? Muffled noise was taken for another dive into the pool of insanity. Felicity even chalked the murky light washing over her as a pique of said madness.
A deep masculine voice asking, “What the hell?” was the first true indicator that Felicity wasn’t imagining the change to her circumstance.
“Dig?” another voice, raspy in nature, responded.
Neither voice was familiar to Felicity, though no voice beyond Damien’s had been for well over a century. Later she would reprimand herself for her timorous reaction – not outwardly, of course, to the men who stood before her – but inside her cage, where she peeked out at them from the dim edges; a voyeur into their world.
She listened with a rapidly beating heart as the two broad shouldered men discussed how a painting got delivered instead of supplies. The slightly shorter of the pair whom Felicity dubbed Mr. Stubble (while the one he’d called Dig she thought of as Mr. Arms) scowled throughout the exchange, annoyed by the mishap. Mr. Arms seemed curious, and possibly concerned if Felicity read him right. Though it was obvious he was also taking in the details of the painting before him. There was an admiring glint in his rich brown eyes. Damien had given few people a chance to study her over her confinement. Those who had always complimented the brushwork and artistry they found, she even heard once ‘how life like’ the single inhabitant appeared. That comment had been soul crushing for Felicity; it inspired another long rebellious bout with her subjugator that had changed nothing. Until the void very little had – where Damien hung her did of course, and it always took her awhile to access her new housing, but once she did the contents of the room were available to her.
For the most part it was books, and the year she spent teaching herself to read had been both a triumph and exercise in frustration. Whether it was kindness, though Felicity would never accept it as such, or ignorance on his part that access allowed her to flourish despite her captivity. It gave her a small slice of life outside of what Damien Darhk permitted her. Then thanks to the likes of Franklin and Faraday, Bell and Puskás, Lovelace and Turning, and all the others who came with and after them; she was gifted technology.
It hadn’t been able to save her, in fact, it could be argued it tied the noose tighter … and yet two strangers were before her and, for now, there was no Damien in sight.
An urgent beeping cut their debate – about what to do with her – short. “We’ll deal with this later,” Mr. Stubble declared turning his back on her and his … employee? Felicity was uncertain about the relationship between the two men. There had been no subservient tone or look from Mr. Arms, but given that Mr. Stubble expected his decree to be followed it was hard to determine the standing between them.
“We’ll get you sorted,” Mr. Arms promised with a pat to the storage box that contained her. His hand dragged, it must have, or something caught. Perhaps it was providence? Her narrow window did not allow Felicity to know how exactly she slipped. All she knew as that one moment she was level and the next, following a thud that reverberated through her, she was catawampus and the edge of her frame touched the cement floor of the room.
It only took moments for the cold of it to seep in. It took longer, so very much longer than if she’d been hanging for the room around her expand, for her to gain access to it. But after years in the dark and centuries under Damien’s thumb, that was the night Felicity would look back on as finally having a taste of freedom.
“That’s a bad idea, which means he’s going to follow through on it,” Felicity grumbled, her annoyance with a certain vigilante and his partner expressed by her forceful keystrokes. It had taken weeks for her to gain full access to the so-called Hood’s lair. Felicity wouldn’t deny that it was treat to observe … well anything again, and as mesmerizing as two wildly attractive men were – with all the shirtless training – just watching her limited world go by was not enough. She needed more, which is why the day she’d managed to access the computer was her BEST day.
Granted it had also been full of aggravation. It was damn near mystifying, not to mention petrifying how much technology had advanced in the nearly two decades she’d been exiled. She’d hoped it would be like riding a bike, a turn of phrase Felicity never enjoyed as she never rode one; and a horse with its own instincts did not equate. Felicity finally settled on the breadth of technological change she encountered as A LOT. She visualized those two simple words in large, ominous font contained within a balloon hanging over her head as illustrated in the newspaper comic strips as she spent all of her time catching up. Save for a few shirtless, sweaty moments that distracted her.
It honestly felt like a miracle that Oliver, as she’d begrudgingly came to think of Mr. Stubble, survived long enough for her to become proficient again. Though with no need to eat or sleep, and nothing else to do, the time she devoted to re-learning the art of computer science was once again A LOT. And as awful as it sounded Oliver getting sidelined by his copycat had given her more time to catch up. Up until this moment Felicity thought she had more time, but Oliver’s stubborn streak had him pushing his limits before being fully healed, which meant she found herself assisting under pressure.
Had she masked the IP properly? Was the firewall she crafted strong enough to withstand an intrusion if she hadn’t and someone managed to trace her back to the source? Doubt plagued her every finger stroke, but she pressed on, determined to aid her emancipators in their quest to save their city.
With a final emphatic stab of the return key the electronically locked and alarmed door standing in Oliver’s path disengaged. On the security feed she hacked, and would wash once the duo left the premises, the vigilante stilled. The hood he wore prevented her from seeing most of his face, but Felicity noticed the line of his jaw harden.
There was no way for her to urge him forward. To let him know the gesture was from a friend watching over him and not a trap. For a breathless, his not hers, moment she wondered if he would pull back. Instead the bow Oliver held at his side came up in a swift, practiced move that him holding it at the ready, nocked with an arrow. If she’d been timing it, Felicity was certain she would have clocked it at under a second.
She could see, but not hear the brief exchange between Oliver and Diggle on the security feed. Felicity made a mental note to practice her lip-reading, even as in the back of her mind she began to wonder if there was way to setup a comm system. She hadn’t managed voice communication with the police back when Damien held her, but with all the text to voice software available there had to be way.
Felicity was so deep into research mode on that very possibility when the duo returned to their headquarters a few hours later she barely took notice of them. Oliver was in mood, more so then usual, but that had not distracted her. It wasn’t until Diggle called him over to see the message waiting for them on Oliver’s outdated system (another problem she was determined to solve as all the patching in the world would only go so far on archaic hardware) that she paid the pair any mind.
You’d have a better shot at keeping your quiver full if you didn’t hesitate when a friend opened a door for you.
Overwatch
The sudden flying of the keyboard off the desk let Felicity know just how bad the vigilante’s mood actually was. She winced, and her technology loving heart screamed a silent protest, as keys separated from the board as it slammed into a nearby pillar, before landing with weak thud on floor.
As Diggle talked his partner down Felicity decided that more than the computer system needed improvement.