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"I think you'd better call back Oliver Queen." Felicity completely froze, her eyes widening as Team Flash turned to look at her in disbelief. "We're going to need the Arrow's help."
Felicity's grip became so tight she was concerned she was going to break the screen of her phone, partly because of the horror of oh god, they know and also because she was so uncontrollably angry at Dr Wells as he flashed her a smug smile. Caitlin and Joe were simply looking stunned by the reveal, but Cisco had an expression like Christmas had come early.
"He is gonna be so pissed," Felicity replied, trying to keep her voice low and steady so it didn't betray how shaken she was at the fact that in one afternoon, somebody had managed to track down the Starling City vigilante's real identity. "You just crossed a line, Dr Wells. Everybody has the right of personal privacy, and Oliver doesn’t receive much for his service, but at least he got that, and you just went too far."
She didn’t know she had unintentionally revealed that Dr Wells had been speaking the truth until; "Oh my god, this is so cool!" Cisco squeaked. "Oliver Queen is the Arrow?!"
Dr Wells ignored Cisco completely and questioned, tipping his head, "Well, Miss Smoak, are you going to call him?" He quirked one eyebrow, still pulling off that smug aura that annoyed Felicity to no end.
Felicity wanted to respond with, 'Not with you eavesdropping, Mr-Smug-McSmugFace' but figured that would be extremely rude, so she just shot him the coldest glare she could conjure up. She was furious on Oliver's behalf, and also with herself, because she had been so confident in her hacking abilities to cover up Team Arrow business. She obviously hadn't been thorough enough. Her glower must have been effective, because Joe winced and Caitlin grimaced.
"I'll call Oliver. You get started on working on a way to stop Barry from hurting someone." She marched out of the room, hoping that Team Flash could tell she was irritated and angry at them. Considering the silence as she exited the Cortex, she figured she succeeded.
“Don’t yell at me, please, because I didn’t know they do would something like this,” Felicity began rambling immediately, nervousness twisting her stomach as Oliver picked up on the second ring. “Short version, Team Flash now know you’re the Arrow, Barry’s gone wacko-angry and there’s a danger he’s gonna hurt somebody and we need you to come and help us subdue him because you’re the only guy we know that's probably willing and not evil and not a psycho who can beat him. And I know, you’re really obsessive about keeping your identity secret, and I know you hate working with strangers, so please don’t kill me when I say that I really, really need you on this one and -”
Oliver’s voice cut through her smoothly, his voice calm and soothing. “Felicity. Calm down. Take a deep breath.” She did so, and felt immensely better, closing her eyes. “Digg and I were heading back already. Barry got hit with the effect of that emotion-manipulating bad guy, didn’t he?”
“Meta-human,” Felicity corrected absentmindedly, running one hand through her hair. “But yeah, he did and because of the lightning, his body is able to fight it off, but instead he’s bottling it up so now it’s exploding out of him and I’m afraid he’s either gonna seriously hurt somebody or kill someone.”
“Alright,” Oliver responded, his voice a little tight. “I’ll suit up. Where should we meet you?”
“STAR Labs,” she answered, glancing up and around the corridor she was standing in. “Barry’s team is working on a way to counter-effect the whammy. God that sounded weird.”
“I’ll see you in ten minutes,” Oliver said. “And Felicity? I don’t know these people. I can’t trust them. For all I know they could be psychopathic maniacs. But I trust you, and if you trust them, then I’m willing to try.”
Felicty swallowed. Caitlin and Cisco she had faith in; they were kind, affectionate, and generally seemed like really good friends to Barry. Joe she also trusted; he obviously cared a lot about the speedster. But Dr Wells had just dropped to double negatives on the brownie point scale. Finally, she said, “I trust them. Just get here, quickly!”
When she arrived back in the main lab, Caitlin, Cisco and Dr Wells were all tapping away at their keyboards wildly, scanning their screens with grimaces. Joe was pacing behind them. They glanced up at her hopefully as she entered, Cisco at the edge of his seat in anticipation.
“He’ll be here in ten minutes,” she reported. “So I guess I better give you the official warning now. Look, Oliver’s not a very trusting person; he’s closed off to strangers and will act coldly towards you all, only because he doesn’t know any of you, and his behaviour isn’t surprising considering what he’s been through and the number of times he’s been betrayed and stabbed in the back. But I vouched for you, so he’s willing to work with you. Just, please, don’t extort that privilege.”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Dr Wells replied seriously, but his lips quirked. He resumed his research a second later, ignoring the warning glance Felicity shot him.
“And, Detective West?” Felicity recoiled slightly when Joe turned to look at her head on, meeting her eyes, but she pressed on. She needed to protect her boys. “Oliver may have killed people in the past, but he doesn’t kill anymore. He does what he can to protect Starling City, and his goal is always to save people and reduce crime. So, please, please, please, don’t say anything that’ll have him at your throat?”
Joe didn’t look as if he knew how to respond to that, but he certainly did not look happy or appreciative of Felicity’s advice. But that was okay, because a moment later, Felicity’s cell phone pinged, and it was Digg texting, telling her that they had arrived. She swiftly texted back the access code and the floor level number with crude directions.
Diggle strode straight in, standing tall and proud, carrying a duffel in one hand and coffee in another, which he promptly passed to Felicity. He had a serious, blank expression on his face that screamed soldier, and looked all too ready to proceed with the mission.
Oliver appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in his green leather Arrow suit, fletchettes attached and glinting in the sharp light, his hood and mask pulled down but his quiver strapped to his back. His eyes darted about the room warily, settling on each individual person for a few seconds, evaluating. Already, he seemed unsure, and he gripped his bow tightly, his spare hand twitching as he itched to grab an arrow.
“Mr Queen,” Dr Wells nodded, lifting his head slightly and sitting back in his wheelchair, hands dropping to his lap. “Glad to see you could join us.”
Oliver’s eyes snapped to him, and something unrecognisible flashed through the cobalt for a second before it vanished, and his face became a stony mask of self-preservation. He didn’t pay any attention to any of the Team Flash members; his blue eyes flickered towards Felicity, and she gave him a rueful yet reassuring smile.
“We’re really sorry about this, Mr Queen,” Caitlin said, wringing her hands. “Honestly. We really weren’t trying to work out your identity.”
“Yeah, well, you, Cisco and Joe weren’t,” Felicity muttered, peering over the screen of her laptop to shoot a glare at Dr Wells.
“It’s Oliver,” the archer replied, his voice stiff and uppercrust, not holding any disdain but simply sounding wary as he ran his eyes over the group again, assessing, doing his nervous twitch of rubbing his thumb and fingers together on his spare hand. “And it was only a matter of time.”
“Come in, we’re still working out the schematics,” Caitlin nodded, turning away to tap at the computer set-up, occasionally glancing up towards Felicity’s screen to catch a sight of what she was working on.
Oliver didn’t move. He seemed almost hesitant to enter and shifted on the balls of his feet, his hand fiddling with his bow and changing its position, a clear sign of his anxiety because of the foreign, unknown environment, with new people and possible threats. Caitlin, who of course managed to notice everything, seemed to realise that the archer had a lot of concerns running through his mind, locked eyes with Joe and Cisco, sending them silent messages.
The two men slunk back in front of the computer set up so they were standing near the Flash suit mannequin, giving the archer the space he needed. Diggle and Felicity were both watching Oliver carefully, knowing fully well that he could startle and bolt at any second.
Still remaining in the doorway, the archer turned himself to the side. "Have you figured out how we can counter-effect whatever that meta-human did to Barry?” Oliver asked, his voice low and portraying some of his uncertainty.
“Not yet,” Caitlin answered apologetically for Felicity. “We’re working on it. For now, all we need you to do is slow him down.”
Oliver gazed at Caitlin unemotionally for a moment, but then his expression softened slightly. He obviously couldn’t find a reason to distrust her, and liked what his analysing was producing. “I can do that,” he said. “But it’s gonna take a lot to take him down. From what I saw from our training sessions, it’ll be almost impossible to keep up with him.”
“Almost impossible,” Felicity called out as the Flash team’s faces all fell. “He said almost. Oliver, stop scaring them. Sorry guys, he’s a bit of a pessimist.”
The archer’s lips quirked at Felicity in an amused smile, before becoming serious again. “It’s true though. If I’m gonna fight him, I’ll have to slow him down. And I can’t think of any ways to do that except one; it’s going to involve him coming back with a few arrow wounds in his legs.”
“You can’t shoot him!” Joe hissed furiously.
Oliver let his eyes skip towards the man, and he pursed his lips. “Fine,” he responded. “I won’t hurt him unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He turned back to Caitlin. “Do you have any sedatives or tranquillisers that’ll work on him with his metabolism?”
Caitlin shook her head. “Not really. A really, really strong and fast-acting one might put him out of action for ten seconds, but nothing is powerful enough to knock him out.” She stood and began rummaging around in her medical cupboards, looking for the bottle.
“Ten seconds could be the difference between life and death,” Diggle finally spoke, his arms crossed as he levelled a look at Team Flash.
Seeing everybody’s questioning look, Felicity sighed and introduced, “Guys, this is John Diggle, or as we like to call him, Overwatch. He usually runs back-up, snipes and generally makes sure everything goes smoothly in the field. Digg, this is Barry’s team.”
“Any sign of Barry yet?” Oliver asked. He finally stepped into the room, and strode towards where Felicity was sitting with her own laptop resting on her knees, setting a hand on her shoulder as if he was grounding himself.
“Not yet. I’m running facial recognition but we haven’t got a hit. And before you ask, yes, I’m running it for his mask too.”
Caitlin jogged over to Oliver. The archer stiffened and tensed as she approached, alert and on guard, but the female doctor didn’t get too close, and simply offered the bottle of horse tranquilliser to him. Oliver narrowed his eyes at it. Gracefully, his bow switched hands behind his back, a rapid move that made Cisco inhale sharply in excitement, before Oliver accepted the bottle.
“Here.” Felicity went on her tip-toes to unclip his quiver. She set it on the countertop and fished an injection arrow out of it to pass it to him. He accepted the arrow from her without any issues, and that made Caitlin look a little confused, but she didn’t say anything.
Oliver filled the injection arrow with the clear liquid and threw the empty bottle to Cisco. He caught it, wide-eyed with awe. Cisco had been silent, just watching with hidden excitement, but simply having Oliver look at him was enough to make him keen. Felicity caught a glimpse of a faint grin of amusement crossing the archer’s face as he returned the arrow to his quiver.
“Quiver check,” Diggle announced.
Oliver picked it up and responded, “Five non-lethals, four normal, one injection, two jettisoning, three explosive.”
Joe echoed, “Non-lethals?”
Oliver barely spared a glance towards him as he re-strapped his quiver on and took his motorcycle keys from Diggle; after that, he received his linked-in comm from Felicity and attached it to his jacket before turning to exit. “I’ll get out on the streets, head towards the precinct. Tell me when you have a definite location.”
“Will do. Stay safe.” Felicity smiled at him. He smiled back.
Before the archer went out of sight though, he paused and turned back to them. “I know it isn’t much of a reassurance… but Barry’s my friend too." His voice was a lot gentler than normal, but it was different to his public-CEO-cover voice. More personal and individual, not something that would appease the press. "He saved my life a year ago and I respect him for what he’s attempting to achieve. I’ll do everything in my power to help keep Barry safe.”
“You're right. It isn't much of a reassurance,” Joe said. Then he stopped and said quietly, “But thank you, anyway. Good luck out there.”
Oliver nodded and departed. Felicity felt her breath stutter in her throat. Two of the people she cared most about in this world were about to go head to head, and she had a feeling that neither of them were going to come back unaffected and unharmed. She could only prepare for the worst, and hope her boys made it home safely. Alive.