Work Text:
Felicity Smoak had always had a love-hate relationship with her brain.
As a child, her intellect isolated from her peers. While all the other little girls were braiding doll’s hair and dressing Barbies, Felicity was pushing up her glasses, frowning over a computer motherboard.
Her mother couldn’t relate to her fascination with all things electronic and her ability to think in tangents at a mile a minute, so even when her intelligence bonded her to her father, it alienated her mom. And after her father left, there was no one left to relate to. No one to wake at the break of dawn with questions of circuitry and resistance, knowing an answer would be automatic, and given with a little smile of pride.
She found a sense of camaraderie and belonging again when she attended MIT, her grades and intellect providing a full scholarship to the prestigious institution. Surrounded by like-minded geniuses, discussing code and programming till the sun came up and indulging her intellectual curiosity was encouraged and she thrived in the environment.
Until Cooper’s arrest. The super virus that she created, that was concocted by her brain, led to his downfall. The guilt and grief made her retreat back into her shell. After graduation, when the world was her’s to conquer, she chose instead an entry-level IT position at Queen Consolidated. Frustrated as she was by her superiors and their lack of appreciation of her skill, she was safe there. Anonymous.
Enter Oliver Queen with a bullet-ridden laptop.
The mysteries he dropped at her door were too much for her mind to resist. She relished the chance to use her less-than-strictly-legal abilities to solve the puzzles and tasks he presented her. And when she joined the team, her quick-thinking and talent with a computer saved Oliver, Diggle and Roy more than once.
She was the brains of the operation, and she was so proud of what they accomplished for the city. And, in Oliver, she found someone who was proud of her, who relied on her, respected her. And loved her.
And she had left him.
In Nanda Parbat. With no allies, no friends. Facing a life as an assassin, not the hero he so desperately wanted to be. The hero she knew he was.
Believing him to be dead after his duel with Ra’s Al Ghul almost broke her. The world lost its colour and her heart broke anew each morning when she remembered he was gone. She grieved. But she hadn’t fully opened her heart to him by that point. It was an act of denial. Of subconscious self-preservation. For she knew that if she accepted and acknowledged just how much he meant to her and then she lost him, it would destroy her.
She was right.
The night they shared in Nanda Parbat was unbearably beautiful in her memory, but it haunted her. She had finally told him how she felt. And the subtle wonder and awe she saw on his face when he heard her declaration was worth all this pain. And she was definitely in pain.
And her brain, her treacherous, stupid brain, just wouldn't let her forget it. As always, in times of crisis, she threw herself into work. She could lose herself in the latest briefings about the Applied Science division or an email conversation with Ray about the ATOM suit, but only for a few minutes at a time. Then she would be hit with a sense memory of Oliver’s breath ghosting over her neck as he moved slowly but surely within her. Of the feel of his scars under her searching fingertips. Of his delicious weight pressing her into the silky red sheets of the bed. She would recall the exact tone of his voice as he shyly admitted that he was glad they finally made love. And the worst, and most constant, memory was their non-goodbye in the cold, dark desert. He had smiled his lovely sweet smile, and kissed her gently, reverently, with the flickering flame of a single lit torch reflecting the unshed tears in his eyes.
She was tormented by that memory throughout the day. And when she eventually let herself fall asleep at night, it played on a loop in her dreams.
What a beautiful way to break her own heart.
****
Two weeks after that kiss, two weeks after they parted and she returned to Starling City without the man she loved, she made a decision. The bombardment of memories intruding on her attempts to numb herself to her grief, finally broke through.
She loved Oliver and he loved her. This was not the end of them.
Her panic-stricken, desperation-filled plan to smuggle a drugged Oliver out of Nanda Parbat failed. But she could think clearly now. The love that blinded her to the folly and danger of that kidnapping attempt would now work to focus her. She would employ every neurone in her wonderfully smart brain to devise the perfect plan to free Oliver of his obligation and take down the League once and for all.
Failure was not an option.
And failure was highly unlikely, anyway. She was a genius, after all. A genius in love. Nothing would stop her.