Chapter Text
If the streetlight hadn't caught the gold buckle, she would have missed it, Felicity mused, her fingers closing around the red leather purse through her threadbare gloves. It was well made and obviously expensive, something that was confirmed when she spotted the Yves St. Laurent label on it.
There was only one way a bag like this ended up in this part of town and that was if the person who'd stolen it had ditched it with plans of reclaiming it later. Glancing around to make sure she was still alone, Felicity opened the bag. She found keys, two lipsticks and a wallet. That was leather too but it was stamped Versace. Yanking off one glove and flexing her fingers, Felicity opened it. The driver's license inside read Thea Queen. The name sounded familiar, like she'd heard it before, but she couldn't place it. The face staring from the little plastic card didn't ring any bells either. Felicity opened the money fold and saw a thick wad of cash. Her eyes widened. Thea Queen was either ridiculously rich or plain stupid. Possibly both.
Further examination of the wallet's contents revealed another picture of Thea Queen, this time with a man who looked enough like her for Felicity to assume they were related; a cousin maybe or...a brother. Ignoring the tight feeling in her chest, she started to put the picture back but changed her mind. She slipped it into her pocket, put the wallet back into the purse and stuffed the purse into her worn burlap tote. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself at this time of night.
Walking out of the alley, eyes darting in all directions to make sure there were no potential threats around, Felicity turned in the direction of the police station. It was late but Detective Lance was probably still on duty. He seemed to live in the police station when he wasn't out on the streets. Felicity liked him because he never talked down to her just because she was homeless.
Sure enough, when she stepped off the third floor elevator and rounded the corner, he was sat at his desk pouring over some papers.
"I found this," Felicity said, startling him.
"Smoaky, hey," he said, shuffling to his feet. "Whad'ya find?"
She pushed the purse toward him.
"Figure someone must have ditched it and planned to circle back," she said.
Lance opened the bag and then the wallet.
"Thea Queen," he murmured. "Some shits have all the luck."
Felicity didn't comment and Lance put the bag and wallet on his desk.
"I'll give her a call in the morning, let her know we found it," Lance told her.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a $20 bill. Felicity accepted it only because she and Lance had a deal. If she found stolen property or passed on information about criminal activity around Starling, he'd give her some cash to help her get by. Mostly, Felicity liked the idea of doing something, even if it was something little, to help clean up the streets of Starling. After all, she had to live on them so really it was in her own self-interest.
"Wanna cup of coffee for the road?" Lance asked her. "Just made a fresh pot."
Felicity offered him a smile and nodded. Minutes later, she was walking back out on to the street, a Styrofoam cup of coffee clutched in her hand. She walked west. There was a building not too far away where she liked to sleep a few nights of the week. There was one spot on the far wall where the heat from the building came through well enough to keep her kind of toasty. It was one of her favorite spots to carve too because it was pretty out of the way and she could get lost in what she was doing without worrying that someone was going to try to slit her throat.
She'd found some great wood today when she raided the dumpster behind an antique furniture store uptown. It was a risky score but worth it. She’d managed to grab several pieces of basswood and pine from furniture that had been broken or was simply being discarded. She’d even found a small piece of butternut that she was going to save for something special.
The city was loud, even at night, and Felicity liked that. It made it easier to drown out the demons that haunted her. Scanning her surroundings one last time, she settled into her spot and wrapped her hands around the cup of coffee. It was still warm enough that it heated her insides as she sipped it. She took her time but eventually she drained the cup and set it aside.
She reached for her Swiss Army Knife, the one Diggle had given her when his arthritis had gotten too bad, and pulled one of the pieces of pine from her tote bag. She turned it over and over in her hands, feeling out all the imperfections before she decided.
Frog.
The familiar feel of the wood and the knife in her hands was soothing and Felicity worked for several hours, first on the frog, and then a butterfly, carved from a piece of the basswood. The sun had just started to peek overhead when she set her carving tools aside, put the finished pieces in a wooden chest she kept in her backpack and allowed herself to doze.
She’d found that staying up at night and catching a few hours of sleep in the early morning was a better routine for a woman on her own. Still, she was an extremely light sleeper so when she heard the tentative click clack of high heels coming in her direction, she was immediately alert.
“Hello?” came a light, feminine voice. “Is anyone out there?”
Felicity frowned.
Was this woman looking for trouble or what?
“Smoaky?” the woman persisted.
Felicity blinked.
Why was this woman looking for her?
Warily, Felicity shifted her head to get a better look around the corner. Slight as it was though, her movement caught the other woman’s attention and Felicity found herself the object of a blinding smile.
“You’re Smoaky, right?” she asked.
Thea Queen, Felicity realized, taking in the perfect clothes, the perfect make up, the wide blue eyes and short, brown, curls.
“How’d you find me?” Felicity asked gruffly.
“Detective Lance said you might be around here,” Thea explained. “He says you like to hang out here some nights.”
Felicity gave a non-comitial shrug.
“Why’d you come looking?” she asked.
“I’m Thea Queen. He said you were the one who found my purse,” Thea said, shifting from foot to foot as if she felt uncomfortable standing in her ridiculously high heels while Felicity sat cross-legged on the ground. “He said you turned it in.”
She reached into her back pocket and extracted an envelope.
“I wanted to say thank you,” Thea continued. “And give you this.”
“What is it?” Felicity asked suspiciously.
“It’s uh…just some extra cash,” Thea said awkwardly. “A token of appreciation, type of thing.”
“I don’t want your money,” Felicity said.
Thea blinked several times.
“I…I’m not trying to offend you or anything,” Thea said. “I just really appreciate what you did. The bag isn’t even mine, I borrowed it from my mother and I would have been so grounded so you know, you did me a favor and I just…want to do one back. It’s not a big deal.”
Felicity shook her head.
Only someone with money would hand it out to random strangers and say it wasn’t a big deal. She didn’t know how much money was in the envelope but she’d hazard a guess and say it was a fair chunk of change. Probably the kind of change Thea Queen had spent on those boots she was wearing.
“I appreciate the gesture,” Felicity said. “But I don’t want your money. You want to do me a favor, take that cash and drop it off at the church on East 7th. The roof is leaking again. They could probably use it to pay for repairs.”
Thea let the hand that had been holding the envelope in Felicity’s direction fall to her side.
“Okay, fine,” Thea said. “You don’t want money. There has to be something you’ll let me do for you to say thanks.”
Felicity gave Thea another once over. She heard sincerity in the young woman’s voice and in her experience that was a rare thing.
“You know, coming here with an envelope full of money was a pretty dumb thing to do,” Felicity said. “How’d you know I’m not some pyscho drug addict?”
“Detective Lance probably wouldn’t have told me where to find you if you were,” Thea pointed out.
Felicity acknowledged that with a tilt of her head to the side.
“Coffee,” she finally said.
“Coffee?” Thea repeated.
“I’ll take one cup of coffee and consider us even,” Felicity confirmed.
“I can totally do that,” Thea said. “Wait here?”
Felicity just gave her a look and Thea flushed a little bit but her smile got brighter if that was possible. She rushed down the street and was back several minutes later carrying a tall white cardboard cup, which she handed over.
Felicity eyed it warily and sniffed.
“It’s a venti vanilla latte,” Thea said helpfully.
“Fancy coffee,” Felicity said, slightly disdainfully.
Thea made a face.
“I kind of got carried away,” she admitted. “I took off without even asking you what kind of coffee you liked and the next thing I know I’m staring at the barista with the judgy eyes and thinking that well, vanilla’s kind of universal so there’s at least a fifty fifty chance that she’ll like it.”
“You talk a lot,” Felicity observed.
There was a time in her life when she talked a lot too but that had changed. A lot of things had changed.
“I get that a lot,” Thea said. “But I can fix this.”
She reached out to gently take the vanilla latte from Felicity’s grasp and she rushed back down the street, faster than anyone should be able to move in those sorts of shoes, Felicity thought. She came back not long after, with a white Styrofoam cup – bigger than the one from the police station – and a paper bag.
“Plain black coffee,” she announced brightly. “And I brought creamer and sugar separate in case you know…I didn’t want to be force feeding you calcium and glucose a second time if you’re not into that kind of thing.”
Felicity’s lips twitched and she found herself resisting the urge to laugh for the first time in what felt like years.
“Thanks,” Felicity said.
“Yeah, no problem,” Thea said.
She cocked her head to one side.
“So, would you hate me if I maybe stopped by and brought you coffee here tomorrow?” Thea asked carefully.
Felicity gave it considerable thought. There was a good chance that by this time tomorrow, Thea Queen would have forgotten all about her and moved on to the next exciting or new thing in her life. But even knowing that, Felicity decided to give her a chance. There was something about the light in Thea’s smile and her eyes that reminded Felicity that some people still found things to be happy about. She may not be one of them but it was nice to know they existed.
Kind of.
“Only if you bring the fancy vanilla stuff,” Felicity said.
Thea laughed.
“No vanilla,” she said. “I promise.”
Felicity gave a small nod and Thea smiled again. She seemed to do that a lot.
“Stay safe Smoaky,” Thea said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And to Felicity’s surprise, she did. At almost the exact same time as the day before, she heard the click clack of heels and Thea rounded the corner, this time carrying two cups of coffee and a medium sized box.
“Morning,” Thea said. “Hold this.”
She handed over the box before Felicity could protest and proceeded to sit herself down on the dirty ground, apparently not caring about the potential damage to her designer wardrobe.
“I think you might be crazy,” Felicity said.
“You wouldn’t be the first person to say so,” Thea said. “Personally, I think its part of my charm.”
She handed Felicity her coffee and then opened the box to reveal an assortment of donuts.
Felicity narrowed her eyes.
“Not part of our deal,” she said.
“Yeah well, I have a ferocious sweet tooth,” Thea said. “And if you don’t stop me, I’m going to eat every single one of these and my thighs will never forgive me. So if nothing else, out of pity for every pair of skinny jeans I own, you should eat some.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry, that was crass,” Thea said, wincing. “The part about the skinny jeans. I mean, god, people have way worse problems.”
“People,” Felicity agreed. “But not you.”
“I know you wouldn’t think so based on that,” Thea said, biting into a glazed donut. “But I do know I’m one of the lucky ones. And Raisa always says that we should never miss an opportunity to help others and not just because we can or it’s the right thing but because you enjoy life more when you help other people find joy in theirs.”
“Raisa?” Felicity asked.
“Technically she’s our housekeeper,” Thea said. “But in reality, she’s like a mother to me and my brother Ollie. She practically raised both of us while my parents were out doing to the society thing.”
“Ollie,” Felicity repeated, testing the name on her tongue and not liking the sound of it.
She recalled the image of the man in the picture she’d taken from Thea’s wallet. He didn’t look like an Ollie but maybe he wasn’t the brother in question.
“Is it short for something?” Felicity asked.
“Oliver,” Thea supplied.
Ah, Felicity thought, that was much better. The man in the picture looked like he could be an Oliver.
“Are you close?” Felicity asked.
She had no idea why she was engaging this…intruder in her world. She’d learned the hard way more than once that getting attached to people only led to heartache and hard times. It was why she never went into the same shelter more than twice a month and why, after Diggle, she’d kept to herself.
His death had devastated her even though he’d been sick for a while and he’d stubbornly refused to go to a hospital. Felicity had begged and pleaded with him but he’d told her that everyone’s time came around and he’d go when it was his.
They’d stayed in a shelter for his last few days because the cold outside too much for him to take. He’d passed in his sleep and Felicity had been inconsolable when she’d woken up and realized he was gone.
The day he died was the first and only time since she graduated from MIT that Felicity had gone anywhere near a computer. It had all come back easily, naturally, and it had taken her all of ten minutes to hack into the largest company in Starling and redirect a few thousand dollars to pay for a burial plot in one of Starling’s best-kept cemeteries and proper funeral services. She made sure his coffin was covered in the American flag to honor his years of service overseas and she’d arranged for fresh flowers to be laid on his grave every Sunday.
Thinking about John reminded Felicity of why the Queen name sounded familiar.
“Queen Consolidated…” Felicity said. “That your family?”
“My dad,” Thea confirmed. “Or technically my grandfather founded the company but my dad runs it now and Ollie will in a few years. Unless he grows a pair and let’s people know he’d rather stick pins in his eyes.”
She shook her head.
“And to answer your question from before,” Thea said. “Yeah, my brother and I are close. Which isn’t what you might expect given that he’s ten years older than me.”
She polished off her second donut and turned inquisitive eyes onto Felicity.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
“That was a question,” Felicity pointed out.
Thea rolled her eyes.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I guess you can,” Felicity said, taking a sip of her coffee.
“Okay, and fair warning,” Thea said. “I am absolutely not trying to be rude or offensive.”
“Uh huh,” Felicity said.
“What do you do all day?” Thea asked.
Felicity made a sound that was part croak and part extremely rusty laugh. Of all the questions, that wasn’t one she’d been expecting.
“I stay up most of the night. It’s safer,” Felicity said. “So usually I catch a couple of hours sleep in the morning and after that it just depends. Sometimes I go to the park. I spend a lot of time looking for good carving wood.”
“You carve wood?” Thea asked. “Can I see something you carved?”
“You said one question,” Felicity pointed out. “That was three.”
Thea grinned.
“Answer them anyway?” she said.
“Maybe some other time,” Felicity said.
Thea sighed.
“I should probably get going anyway,” she said regretfully. “If I’m late to my internship I’ll never hear the end of it from either of my parents.”
She shook her head.
“Thea, you need to apply yourself,” she said, mimicking what Felicity assumed was her mother.
Then her voice changed, presumably in an imitation of her father.
“Thea, think of your future,” she mock growled.
Her words brought flashes of Felicity’s own past to the surface and Felicity found herself clenching her fists to fight them back.
“I swear,” Thea continued. “It’s like they want me and Ollie to be clones of them. Ollie is going along with it but damn it, I do not want to be my mother.”
“I don’t think anyone wants to turn into their mother,” Felicity said quietly.
Thea gave her a thoughtful look but she didn’t press and Felicity was grateful.
“Same place, same time, tomorrow, okay?” Thea said instead.
It wasn’t really a question so Felicity didn’t answer it but when Thea’s heels click clacked the next morning, Felicity was there, waiting.
“Smoaky, your face!” Thea exclaimed. “What happened? Are you okay? Did someone hit you?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Felicity mumbled, reaching for the coffee in the cup holder Thea was carrying.
After nearly two weeks of this routine, Felicity was comfortable simply taking the coffee she knew was meant for her rather than waiting for Thea to hand it over.
“Just some creep who thought he could take advantage,” Felicity said.
She grimaced.
“He thought wrong,” she said.
Diggle had taught her well and Felicity had sent her would be attacker scurrying away with a broken wrist. But not before he’d managed to backhand her across the face, hence the angry bruise and now, Thea’s horrified and worried expression.
“Partly my fault for staying here so much lately,” Felicity said, taking a sip of coffee. “Need to change it up more.”
Thea’s mouth opened but it took her a few moments to get any words out.
“Is it my fault?” she finally asked. “That you’ve been staying here more? Cause, I can totally meet you somewhere else. I didn’t even…”
“It’s one of my favorite spots,” Felicity interrupted. “That has nothing to do with you and the coffee crack.”
“Coffee crack?” Thea repeated, her face relaxing into its usual smiling expression. “Is that because of how much you like coffee or a reference to past experience with actual crack?”
“Maybe both,” Felicity said.
Thea pressed her lips together.
“I never quite know when to take you seriously,” Thea said.
Felicity simply shrugged.
“You should probably let a doctor take a look at that,” Thea observed after another look at Felicity’s cheek.
“It’s just a bruise,” Felicity said. “It’ll fade.”
To Felicity’s relief, Thea changed the subject. They’d established a balance of sorts over these 12 days. They shared coffee and sometimes donuts and Thea talked a lot and sometimes Felicity talked. Mostly in short, tense sentences but still, she shared a few things about herself. Never as much as Thea actually wanted to know but the younger woman was accepting of the boundaries that Felicity kept and she didn’t push.
“So, you said you needed to change it up more,” Thea said. “Is that like…some sort of street rule? Part of a secret code?”
Felicity tugged her tattered woolen hat down over her ears.
“If you consider practical ways to keep yourself alive, rules,” Felicity said. “Then yeah, I guess so.”
Thea bit her lip.
“I know that there’s like 99.9 percent chance you won’t accept,” she said. “But I still want to put it out there. If you ever want a roof over your head for the night or you know, nights, you could come and stay with me.”
Felicity snorted.
“Great idea,” she said. “Bring the homeless girl in off the street to the McMansion you live in. I’m sure your parents would be thrilled.”
Thea sighed.
“We all know that Raisa’s the boss of our house and she would be totally fine with it,” she said. “And if you want to be super fussy about it, it’s a McManor and not a McMansion.”
Felicity shook her head.
“You are so strange,” she said.
“Then I guess that makes you a weirdo,” Thea said. “For liking my strangeness.”
Felicity laughed softly earning her a blinding grin from Thea.
“You have a great laugh, Smoaky,” Thea said. “I wish I heard it more often.”
She used to laugh a lot, Felicity thought. Maybe this was why she hadn’t put an end to this…whatever this connection was she felt to Thea Queen. Maybe it was because in a lot of ways, Thea reminded her of who she had been when she was younger.
Excited and enthusiastic about life, the world at her fingertips, completely clueless about how tragedy could take over your life and drown you in darkness and before you even knew it was happening you were spiraling out of control, alienating the people who loved you and living in your car, determined to escape the crushing weight of expectations and grief.
“Is that a hickey?” Felicity asked, nodding to a gap in Thea’s scarf.
Thea blushed and adjusted the fabric.
“Maybe,” she allowed.
“Good for you,” Felicity said.
“Yeah, he is,” Thea agreed. “It’s unconventional what with him being the guy who stole my purse and all but every relationship has to start somewhere, right?”
Felicity choked on her coffee and stared at Thea.
“He’s not a bad guy and he challenges me,” Thea continued. “Which is new. I don’t get that a lot, you know?”
“Not really,” Felicity said honestly.
“The way I see it, what makes two people a good fit for each other isn’t necessarily what they have in common,” Thea said. “It’s how they help each other grow and experience life in a new way. Roy and I come from two completely different worlds but that’s what makes the time we spend together so much fun. I’m probably not making as much sense as I want to be but…”
“No, I get it,” Felicity said. “I’m just not sure it works out in most cases.”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” Thea agreed. “But it’s better than the alternative. Take my brother and his fiancée for example.”
Felicity’s eyebrows hiked upwards in surprise. This was the first time Thea had mentioned a fiancée in relation to her brother.
“Laurel is…nice,” Thea said. “She genuinely is. She’s perfectly put together all the time. She has a law degree from Stanford. She gave up her cushy corporate job to run an art gallery and nobody batted an eye because running an art gallery is a perfectly acceptable hobby for a woman whose main job six months from now will be being married to Oliver Queen.”
“You don’t approve,” Felicity said.
It wasn’t a question.
“I approve,” Thea disagreed. “Laurel is very approvable. But she doesn’t make Ollie happy, not really.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Felicity countered.
“There’s a lot of little things,” Thea said, waving her hand. “I think what gets me most is when he talks about her or when other people talk about her, his smile…it isn’t real. It’s his Oliver Queen smile.”
“Oliver Queen smile?” Felicity repeated, clearly not understanding.
“Hey, rich people have a code too,” Thea said lightly. “Cause you know, people are always watching us and judging us even they though they don’t know anything about who we are as people. And you learn to fake it, to be what people expect instead of who you are. Oliver Queen is an image and that image is a match made in heaven for Laurel. But Oliver? The man? Yeah, I’m convinced he wants something else entirely.”
“Are you sure you’re not projecting what you want onto him?” Felicity said.
Thea sighed.
“No,” she admitted. “I’m not sure. I just…I really love him, you know? I want the world for him.”
“Maybe he has the world he wants,” Felicity said. “Even if it’s not the one you want him to have.”
“I hope so,” Thea said.
She glanced at her watch.
“Duty calls,” she said. “Same time, new place, tomorrow?”
“Corner of 9th and Griffen,” Felicity supplied. “There’s a bench.”
“It’s a date,” Thea said. “Will you hate me if I bring you flowers?”
“Yes,” Felicity said promptly.
Thea’s giggles echoed well after she’d turned the corner and Felicity found herself shaking her head in amusement as she gathered her things.
It was time for her to hit the next shelter in her rotation and take a shower, wash her clothes and maybe grab a hot meal if she was hungry. She still had some of yesterday’s donuts tucked into a side pocket in her backpack so she could always snack later if that was more appealing.
As she walked through the city she was only marginally aware of the looks people shot her or even the ones who went out of their way to walk around her. Her first couple of weeks on the streets, she’d been excruciatingly aware of those looks, almost to the point of paranoia. With time, and Diggle’s comforting presence, she’d learned to tune them out so that now, they hardly registered.
It took her forty minutes to walk to the shelter on Peters but she wasn’t in any hurry. She’d just walked past the main offices when someone called out to her.
She turned to see the shelter coordinator, Barry, walking towards her, his long legs eating up the distance.
“Smoaky, hey,” he said. “I figured you were due to pop in any day now.”
He pulled up short when he spied the bruise on her face but years of working in this neighborhood and this shelter had taught him to be careful how he broached these things.
“You good?” he asked, nodding towards her cheek
Felicity nodded.
“Yeah, no harm, no foul,” she said.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Barry said. “Uh, here.”
He handed her a small bottle, which on closer inspection turned out to be lavender and lemongrass scented shampoo.
“Someone brought it in with a bunch of other things yesterday,” Barry explained. “I thought you might like it.”
Felicity blinked, surprised by the gesture. It was sweet.
“That’s really nice of you,” Felicity said. “Thanks.”
Barry beamed.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “By the way, we’re having a meeting tonight. You going to be able to make it?”
Felicity hesitated.
She hadn’t had the nightmares in a while although she had been thinking about Adam more than usual. She figured all the talk about Thea and her brother probably had something to do with that. Maybe going to meeting as a sort of pre-emptive strike wasn’t a bad idea.
“Yeah, I can come,” she told Barry. “What time?”
“Six,” Barry said.
Felicity nodded and then made her way to the locker rooms. She went through her usual routine of stowing her things, taking a shower, shampooing her hair and once she was dressed again in a clean, if ratty, pair of old jeans and an oversized sweater, she headed for the washing machines to put in the clothes she’d been wearing and a few other items. Living on the streets didn’t mean she abandoned all sense of personal hygiene or cleanliness.
Settling in to wait for the machine to complete its cycle, Felicity extracted her carving tools and the half finished ladybug she’d started the night before. She was almost done with it when she got the feeling that she was being watched. Since she sensed curiosity rather than danger she let it go and a few minutes later the “culprit” approached her. Felicity found herself staring at chubby cheeked toddler with black hair and caramel colored eyes; eyes that were intently fixed on the wooden animal in Felicity’s hand.
“It’s a lady bug,” Felicity said. “Do you like it?”
The little girl nodded and Felicity gave her a small smile. She made one more cut to the shell and then handed the carving to the little girl.
“Keep it,” she said.
The child’s face lit up in delight and she threw her tiny arms around Felicity’s legs before running back towards her mother to show off her new toy. The mother in question looked tired and worn but she shot Felicity a grateful smile.
It was a random moment in life filled with random moments but Felicity found herself struggling with it. Until she’d met John and he shared stories of his nephew A.J. with her, Felicity had never given much thought to having children but over the years, the thought had crossed her mind more than once. More than that, there was a part of her that actually ached for it. That wanted to see if she could do better or different than her own parents had, that wanted to reclaim some of that innocence she’d lost by replacing it with the innocence of her own baby.
But she couldn’t imagine allowing herself to get close to a man in the way that was required to produce children and it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with trust. If she was honest, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to even be a mother. The fear of loss was so much a part of her life now, she couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that.
By the time she’d finished her laundry, her mind was spinning and her attempts at taking a nap were completely unsuccessful. A little bit frustrated, she made her way over the library corner and settled in with a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice. She was a third of the way through it when a glance at the clock on the wall showed that it was time for the meeting.
Pulling together all her stuff she made her way to the basement. There were already a few people in the room and not all of them were residents of the shelter or its environs. Felicity sat toward the back in a corner, away from most of the rest of the group.
The first man to speak talked about how his drinking had nearly cost him his wife and daughter and the long road he was still on to earn their forgiveness. The next speaker was a woman who had turned to drugs after her husband had died suddenly. She was fresh out of rehab and 93 days sober.
As Felicity listened to different people sharing the experiences that had led to the addictions, she wrestled with her own memories. Her brother, Adam, had been diagnosed with cancer when he was seventeen and Felicity was only eight. He’d fought it off a first time, going into remission at 19 but by 23 it was back and vicious. Aggressive chemo and experimental drug therapy had bought him a few years; time enough to see Felicity go off to MIT at 16 and enter her senior year twenty four months later.
To say that Felicity had taken his death hard was an understatement. The cancer had weakened Adam’s body but not his mind or his spirit. He’d been the first one to encourage Felicity as she fiddled with machines and computers, taking things apart and putting them back together.
He was the one she pitched her software concepts to and she was the one who made him laugh the most even thought it was sometimes physically painful to do so. He’d often said that Felicity was the glue; that without her light and laughter, their family wouldn’t have survived the ordeal of his diagnosis and subsequent treatments.
And maybe there was truth in that but the fact was that when Adam died, Felicity was overcome with bitterness. She was mad at the world, mad at the doctors who hadn’t been able to come up with a better treatment for him and even more so mad that for all the technology out there and available, there wasn’t a machine or program or a code that could keep Adam alive.
Felicity had finished her last year at MIT on the basis of her genius IQ and the two solid years of work she’d put in before tragedy stuck her family. She’d spent her last seven months in school skipping classes, never studying and more often than not drinking and partying in Boston. Her campus friends had been traded for bar bunnies and bouncers and she’d done her first line of cocaine on what would have been Adam’s 26th birthday.
Her parents were still caught up in their own grief but they didn’t ignore Felicity’s downward spiral. If anything they reacted violently, terrified of losing another child. They’d driven her straight from her graduation ceremony to a rehab facility.
It was mostly the guilt they kept heaping on her about what Adam would have wanted for her that got her to go along with it. She knew they were right about that much. Adam wouldn’t have wanted a junkie or a drunk for a sister. So she stayed sober although the cravings for something mind altering didn’t entirely disappear.
The family moved from Central City to Starling because her parents wanted a fresh start and thought she should have one too. Felicity hadn’t been thrilled but she hadn’t protested either. It wasn’t until almost a year after Adam had passed, when her parents started dropping hints about her plans for the future that things really fell apart.
They started asking about job applications and leaving different company catalogues around the house. She had to start making decisions, they said, about what she was going to do with her life. Felicity had reacted like a wounded animal and the fights had been epic.
How her parents could expect her to move on when Adam was cold in the ground was beyond her. How they thought that she would ever want to be involved in developing technology to save other people when no one had saved her brother was equally incomprehensible.
“You owe it to Adam, Felicity,” her mother had said tearfully. “He was your biggest fan. You know he would have wanted you to live up to your potential.”
“Adam is dead!” Felicity had screamed. “He died. Dead people don’t have opinions.”
That was the night Felicity realized she was as mad at Adam for dying as she was at the rest of the world for letting it happen. It was also the night she realized that sex was as good a mind-altering substance as any other and when a few weeks later, her mother walked in on her giving the neighbor’s son a blowjob, it was the final straw.
Her parents cut her off and threw her out and Felicity was actually relieved to be free of all the pressure. She lived in her car for a while, until she couldn’t afford gas or parking and it got towed with the majority of her stuff inside it. She didn’t have the money to reclaim it from the impound lot and that lead to her first night on the streets.
It was the night she met John Diggle and it was the first good thing that had happened in years. Felicity wouldn’t trade that - trade her relationship with him - for anything in the world. Not even more time with Adam. Some days she felt guilty about that but mostly she figured that he would understand that Diggle was just as much a brother to her as he had ever been.
The end of the meeting brought Felicity back to the present. She took her time gathering her things and then she made her way to where the coffee was. Barry sided up to her with a small smile.
“You know,” he said. “If you’re not comfortable talking in a group setting, we have other options.”
“Yeah,” Felicity said. “I know.”
“Okay, well, whenever you decide you’re ready,” Barry said. “We’re here.”
Felicity snapped the lid on her to go cup of coffee and with a nod in Barry’s direction, headed back out on to the street. She knew he was trying to be helpful, letting her know there was a place for her there, someplace she could belong if she wanted.
What he didn’t understand and what Felicity wasn’t about to explain was that she didn’t want to belong anywhere. If you didn’t have a place – a home – and you didn’t have a family, then no one could take it from you.
Not god.
Not fate.
No one.