Chapter Text
Punch after punch she felt the pain rise through her arm. She didn’t care.
1 hour the Count had her, such a small amount of time, and yet so much happened. She couldn’t deny the guilt she felt yet again. Guilt that Oliver had killed, and guilt for the relief that he was dead. Oliver was determined she was pure, innocent, unharmed. He was terrified of luring her into the darkness and she knew it, she wasn’t stupid. She wanted to absolve his guilt, tell him he had nothing to worry about for the darkness was already inside her. But he shouldn’t know, he couldn’t know. None of them could.
They talked about their shared scars, experiences of war. She wished more than anything to join in, be a part of the comradery they held. They were heroes, they earned their scars through pain and sacrifice, through selflessness, through growth. Felicity saw her scars as a constant reminder of her weakness. The punching bag smashed against the wall as she kicked it, sending it flying without thought. It was only 3am, just 5 hours since she was freed, and 4 until she had to go to work and pretend like all of this never happened. Like she wasn’t used to it. As the screams of her neighbour increased, she apologised and checked her phone to make sure everyone was safe. Moira and Oliver were at the Queen mansion, no doubt neither of them sleeping from the events of the day. Diggle was at his apartment and Roy and Thea were together at Roy’s house. She breathed a breath of relief she didn’t know she was holding at the knowledge they were safe in their houses and sat on her bed for a second, pain all over. When she felt liquid spreading from her side, she rose and went to her bathroom to collect medical supplies, feeling the familiar spread of blood. She saw no bandages or stitches and cursed under her breath, knowing she had pulled the ones she did earlier in her workout. As she closed the bathroom cabinet she was met with the reflection of her face in the mirror, but she didn’t see herself.
Bruises were beginning to form on her face and she knew if she checked it would not be the only place she found them. Her complexion was pale, her eyes darker and pupils enlarged, searching for the threat she logically knew would not be present. This might have been a mirror but she did not see her, she saw the threatened little girl from all those years ago, and she didn’t like it.
She broke from her thoughts at the sound of blood dripping and all of the pain flooded back. Checking on her phone no one was in the foundry, she grabbed some workout clothes, a sweatshirt and her keys, slipping on her shoes as she left.
Once she arrived at the lair, she removed her top to asses her injury and grabbed the necessary equipment. She didn’t like blood and knew if anyone entered while she was working, she wouldn’t notice so she set an alert on her phone should anyone move, to give herself time. By the time she stitched herself up, bandaged her ribs, tended to the bruises on her face (she didn’t dare even acknowledge the others, knowing that would admit they were there) and cleaned her cuts, it was gone 4am. She knew she wouldn’t sleep after the night's events, so dressed herself in her workout gear and sweatshirt, knowing if anyone came in, she didn’t want them to see her injuries. She punched and she kicked. She jumped and she flipped. She tried to regain all the training that she lost tonight, when she finally needed it again.
In the van there wasn’t enough space, and she knew she would rather run, or talk her way out of it than fight. The Count wasn’t an idiot, there was no reason for an executive assistant to need to know how to fight, and with her close connections to Oliver and the Arrow, she couldn’t risk him putting the pieces together. What she did regret was not using her skills once they got to QC, do something sneaky in front of the guards, so no one would know. Kick him and run when he tried to tie her to the chair. But she didn’t. She was worried to mess up in front of the guards and risk The Count killing them, and by the time he tied her to the chair, she was stuck in her mind, taken back to all those years ago by his comments about “personal satisfaction” and how she must be good if she got her promotion.
By the time he untied her to rid her of her clothes, the only thing she could think to do was squirm and scream, any professional training gone. He slapped her to the ground and straddled her hips, and as he undressed her, she was paralysed, stuck in the past, stuck in her mind. She could not fight and some primal part of her brain knew it had to switch off it she could survive this again. She remembered some comment he made about her calmness, asking if she was imagining Oliver as the fight finally drained completely from her body. Once he was finished, she was bleeding, the situation all too familiar for her body to handle, and as the Count saw the array of scars on her body and took in her reaction to the ordeal, he realised this was not new to her. He took his knife, saying something about the man before having a good idea, leaving scars where no one could see but her. She passed out and he kicked her, trying to wake her again to hear her screams as the knife travelled down her abdomen, but her mind was stronger, and it took her away from him.
When she awoke, she was tied again to the chair, her hair back in its pony tail, even if it was messy. Felicity realised he undid it during the act but must have put it back up while she was unconscious, and strangely it was that thought that made her feel most sick. He had dressed her again, and placed the chair in front of Oliver’s desk and she realised with a jolt that he called Oliver, and knew he was the Arrow. Sobs escaped her throat and bubbled up, her reaction almost childlike, and she wondered if this is how it was now. If everything would remind her of this, which would remind her of that, and she would just be a little 13-year-old girl, hurting and lonely. Just a child.
When Oliver killed him, she broke. It was her fault, she had failed Oliver in her weakness, and he had killed again. The guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders and the lack of remorse she felt at his death made it worse. Oliver tried to reach her, to wake her but at his touch she flinched. Although the touch was different, it was touch all the same, she wasn’t sure how long it would take to get used to that. It took her several minutes but after he left, she cleaned the blood off the floor, protecting Oliver even now, but she stopped dead in her tracks when she realised that most of it was actually hers. She scrubbed the floors with desperation as sobs took over once more, and she knew she had to leave before the police came up, she couldn’t handle questioning.
In hindsight there was a lot of that night she can't remember: how long she was unconscious with the Count, how she got to her car, how she patched herself up as best she could with her first aid kit that never left her car, but most importantly how she went into the foundry and helped Diggle make an antidote, without him knowing something was wrong. She sat at her computers, in the most pain she’d ever experienced in her life, making an antidote and administering to Digg, and then waiting in silence, dutifully anticipating Oliver’s arrival. He’d had a tough time with his mother’s case, and knew he would be thrilled to have her home, but she still knew he would come to the lair, there was no way he couldn’t. He told her there was no choice to make, and lost so deep in his eyes, she knew he thought it was true, knew he thought he was absolving her guilt so she could go home, undisturbed.
She knows she went home soon after, that she dealt with her injuries without thought at home, tried to do work but was assaulted with pain, physical and mental from both her past and her present. She knows she changed into workout gear and got out the punchbag she only used a handful of times in the past 2 years, when the nights were long and lonely and the memories wouldn’t let her sleep or even just be.
This wasn’t the first time she was raped, wasn’t even the second. When she was 13, it was just her and her mother, but one of her ‘father’s friends’ came to visit when it was only her alone. Felicity had thought the man had come to tell her that her father was coming home, but the man was not friendly, he was drunk and sick and he overpowered the little girl without second thought, stealing from her what should never be stolen. Her mother didn’t return for weeks after, having to work away from home just to make sure Felicity could afford to go to school. Felicity managed to get rid of the man when his drunken body had finished and fallen asleep on top of her. She led there for hours, paralysed with fear as her brain realised what had happened, she was hurting everywhere and something changed so sharply within her mind. She pushed the man's body out the door, went to the shop to buy black hair dye and makeup, and began looking into collages, ready to leave the town as soon as possible. Then there was Cooper. She had found an older male figure, with brains and strength and he stayed. It was amazing at first, he cared for her, looked after her, and saw the true extent of her intelligence. Soon after, things began to take a turn. It started off small, just using the odd line of code from her and stopping to acknowledge she did anything. As her skills grew and she began to code without him, and with greater success, he began to control the amount she did on her own. It was just verbal manipulation, but it never seemed that way. He began to use her past against her, threaten that no one could lover her, that he was her saviour. Then she was achieving more and more and her success was skyrocketing. Soon enough, Cooper’s true colours showed. He would abuse her both mentally and physically and when she reached out to self-defence classes, he stopped her leaving their flat without him, said it was because people would hurt her because everyone hated her, but not him and she was lucky he hung around her. She knew it was wrong, but he had her trapped. When things escalated to the point of rape, he apologised. He helped her recover at home, and became gentler again. There was a vicious cycle: care for her, her intelligence outshone him, abuse begins, she starts to stand up, extreme physical abuse and then repeat. He raped her more than once, taking anything he wanted from her whenever he wanted.
Towards the end of their relationship, Cooper took everything from her: her coding, her ‘super virus’, her food, her money, her essays, her body. When she unplugged that computer to stop him erasing student loans, she told herself it was the only thing to do, but secretly she thought about how it made it easier to track because they never covered their tracks. So she blamed herself for his death. With the time left before her graduation, Felicity began progressing with her fighting. She would never be helpless like that again and she would not allow others to either. She spent her free time helping those in trouble, occasionally getting in to fights when needed, especially on the days when thinking about Cooper was too much, he had scarred her mind and her body forever, so when she graduated, she ditched all her clothes, dyed her hair blond, and let out the bubbly persona she was determined to keep. She was still Felicity Smoak, she was just brighter. She was good with computers, but she wasn’t a hacktivist. She’s been through darkness, but she wasn’t going to be a victim. She got the job at QC and left for good, her father, mother, Cooper and Myron behind. She had survived, the optimist inside, and she would never be lost again.
Felicity came back to the present as the tears became too much. Here in the lair she had always felt safe, secure, hidden, but although the lair could keep out the bad guys, it couldn’t keep away the memories. She looked at the training dummy to see it had been broken, but not snapped. She sank to the floor, thankfully not having pulled the stiches in her side yet again. She took off the sweatshirt, looking at the scars littered across her skin. The ones left by Cooper, the sparks from when she confronted the man who abducted Walter, the ones left by the Count, and she cried in shame at the ones self inflicted.
Her life had not been easy, but as Oliver had once said “living is not for the weak” and she was determined to not be weak. What had happened today had made her feel weak, made her feel useless, like a waste of a life. When she had let Cooper use her, she had hated herself. When she had let that man into her house, just because he said he knew her father. At first, she had wanted to blame her father, told herself that nothing would have happened if he had done things differently. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been weak to Cooper’s manipulation. Then she had blamed herself, for so long she had blamed herself. But that was okay now.
She had survived. She had come out of it stronger, brighter, smarter and she came out of it with her team. Her experiences not only made her who she is, not only led her to QC for Oliver to find her there, but also made her appreciate exactly what they were doing. Her life had forged her into a weapon to fight the crime of the city with her intelligence, her skill, her compassion, her understanding, and her ability to stand up and do what’s right whether it be in the form of calling Oliver out on his bs or standing behind his good intentions, guiding her family through the night or any other part of this job which this little family dedicated their lives to. The memories, the scars, the darkness would linger, but Felicity Smoak was not going down without a fight and she had enough light and strength in her to keep the darkness from taking over, in her and those who needed it.
Her experiences didn’t decide who she was, her choices did. She could choose to cry the night away, give in to the negative voices threatening to take over telling her she wasn’t good enough. She could choose to run away from that office tomorrow and that would be okay, because what she had gone through was traumatic, it was a fight, a battle. But she would win! With Oliver, with Diggle beside her. Even Sara. But in that moment, Felicity chose to just sit. She would fight this battle, but for now she needed to stop and sit. Give the world a chance to catch up with her never ceasing brain.
And for now, that was enough.