Chapter Text
Oliver had sharpened his arrows. That was nothing new. He had brushed his hood and sprayed coating on the leather parts of his 'hoodiform' (Felicity had, obviously, come up with that). He had even swiped the floor at their new lair and checked all of the training gear, feeling the floor around the training mat for any nails that stuck out, hammer at the ready. He had found none. He had arranged the arrows by function and fiddled with the mechanics of the explosive arrows long enough that Diggle was starting to get worried.
He turned the page on his book, glanced up at Oliver as he started to string a new bow. When he took up the brush again and went in search of imagined dust mites around the edges of the training mat, Diggle put down the book, sighed and looked at his friend. No effect. After the next chapter he glanced up again. Oliver was standing behind the arrow stand and setting all of the arrow points in the same angle. When he was finished, he started again, to a different angle. Diggle fished the bookmark from among the remaining pages and snapped the book shut on it. The sharp noise finally caught Oliver's attention.
They looked at each other for a while. One of Oliver's hands was tapping the edge of the arrow case nervously.
"Where is Felicity?" he asked as if they had been just talking about her.
Diggle shrugged.
"She's not again in Central City?"
"Nah, I don't think so. Now that Barry's awake, I've heard less and less about him."
Oliver looked down. He had seen Barry. Just once, when he run to Starling City to angst about himself. But as far as Oliver knew, he had headed back to Central as soon as they were finished. Well, actually, Oliver had made his cool exit and swung himself to a perch where he could see him leave the city. So if he hadn't doubled back that night, he hadn't really been around since he woke up from the coma.
"Too bad she has a thing for guys with hero complexes," Diggle chuckled.
"So she's not at Lyla's baby shower?"
"She was supposed to be, but she cancelled yesterday. I think she felt strange to spend time with Lyla's old college friends, the ones who live lives where they've never had to deal with a gunshot, or a mad drug lord. Lyla said she does, a bit," Diggle sighed. "So, she's not with us, she's not at the QC and she's not at the baby shower. It's a quiet night. The girl has a life, I think it's commendable."
Diggle opened the book again. Oliver walked to Felicity's screens.
""Would it be weird if I traced her phone?"
"Yes, Oliver, it would be very weird," this time he didn't look up from the book. "You could always just call her and ask her where she is."
Diggle watched Oliver pick up the phone and set it down again.
"She's just always normally... here," Oliver muttered.
* * *
Felicity could hear her phone ringing upstairs in her room. She could hear it, but there was no way of getting to it now. It could be something important. It could be John, or Oliver calling about a case. She had not personalized the ringtones for her new phone yet. She cursed her clumsiness again. She had dropped the phone on the concrete, when her mother had come to the airport to pick her up. She also blamed the weather, the hot wind that made her want to rush from air conditioned building or vehicle to another as soon as possible. Most of all, she blamed her mother's new boyfriend.
Felicity's mother had always hung out with shady characters, Felicity's father included. But this took the cake. The guy who had walked toward her across the airport floor with her mother was probably a couple of years older than Felicity. More often than not that was the case with her mother's boyfriends nowadays. Although this one had been dressed rather more formally than usual.
Her mother had given her a kiss on both cheeks, missing the general direction of her head, or at least avoiding it by several inches on both sides. She had clutched her hand for a second with her long-nailed fingers and then flicked her curly hair, grabbing Felicity's ponytail.
"Why do you pull your hair up, honey? It's so much prettier when it's down," she had complained in greeting.
"Mom..."
"This is Dean, honey. Give him your bags, we're parked just outside."
"Oh, it's alright..." Felicity had tried to say, but Dean had grabbed hold of the handle of her small suitcase and led the way back toward the exits.
The background music of Felicity's childhood, her mother's chatter, had been turned on immediately. She had complained about the weather, the traffic, the neighbors... If John and Oliver only knew how much her mother talked compared to her, Felicity had almost smiled, but had been interrupted in her thoughts when they stepped into the car park and she saw the car into the trunk of which Dean was lifting her suitcase. She had glanced around in the vain hope that this would turn out to be some kind of joke. Dean had got into the front seat and the limousine had slid toward her stunned self and her mother who was still talking.
"Dean's the driver?" Felicity had interrupted her mother.
"Yes honey, I told you that."
Felicity hadn't been listening.
The first thought that had come to Felicity's mind was that maybe it was a hearse. But she had seen Oliver sliding into and out of enough of this kind of cars that she couldn't but trust her eyes.
The car had slid out of the parking garage and into the sun, which was already beating down on Felicity's pale skin. She had had to dig out her phone to snap a photo for the guys. Then she had realized that she had decided not to tell them about the visit. She had snapped the cover on the phone just as the back door opened and a tall man stood out of the dark to extend his hand to her mother.
"Honey. This is Dwayne," her mother had cooed and disappeared into the car. Dwayne was about her mother's age. He had dark hair, some gray at his temples. Thick eyebrows dominated his facial features, but the most captivating were the eyes. They were blue as glass. The irises were darker at the edges and the color seemed to fade almost to white around the pupil.
During the last few years Felicity had come across a fair amount of colorful characters. Most of them showed some emotion in their eyes, even Slade, with his mad rage, the Count and the Dollmaker with their manic obsessions. Even Oliver, though he excelled at hiding his emotions... No, Felicity could not compare this man to Oliver, no way. Except as a contrast. Oliver hid so much that his gaze was aflood with it. This man seemed to hide nothing, seemed to feel nothing.
Felicity had seen the edges of his mouth turn up to an imitation of a smile. Felicity had followed suit. The skin around the man's eyes even crinkled in a way that would have been endearing, had the smile been genuine. The phone had fallen from her hands, the perfect excuse to drop her gaze. She had picked up the pieces and then shook Dwayne's warm hand, and finally stepped into the car.