Title: Blindsided
Word Count: 2397

Notes: Happy Thursday everyone! I'm trying to get back on the posting-once-a-week train, so I worked this up in the past two days. I'm not going to be doing long fic, but I'm going to try to post various projects every week. So you might see a fic pop up over the next few weeks called "Bits and Pieces" that's going to have very small snapshots of AUs. By small, I mean about the size of this fic. I did have the time to work this one up last night (BECAUSE I TOTALLY ROCKED MY MICRO PRACTICAL YO), but I don't think I'll be able to crank out an 8,000-word fic every week.

I should not be allowed to watch TV while writing fic ever again. I have a tendency to think of making Arrow AUs while watching shows. I've been feeling pretty down this week and I felt the need for some cheesy, hollow romance shows, so of course I stumble across the 2012 run of Beauty & the Beast. Which kind of—loosely—inspired this AU. I kind of combined it with another idea I've been throwing around, so fear not some cheesy, hollow romance. Just the normal kind of fic you see from me—if you can call it normal. ;) Hope you enjoy!

As Felicity watches her drunk coworkers stagger around her, she frowns at the very sober brunette sitting next to her and demands, "Remind me why I'm here again." Of all the stupid things she's done, this has to be at the top of them. The Queen family hosts one of these parties every year, and she usually avoids them like the plague. Unfortunately, she made a promise to the little brunette, and Felicity always keeps her promises.

"Because I'm your best friend, kind of your roommate, and kind of your boss?" Thea offers with a slight lilt of her voice, hesitant in her response. "Besides, you promised—I pass my calc exam, you come to the Christmas party and live a little. And I made a seventy-nine. So you get to sit here with me and watch everyone else get drunk while we stay sober." She crosses her arms. "It sucks being sober—it's against family tradition." She looks away, getting that distant look in her eyes that Felicity knows all too well.

Every great once in a while, when she looks as lost as she does now, Thea reminds Felicity of the girl she first met three years ago, just after the blonde started at Queen Consolidated. Back then, Thea Queen had been angry and scathing because of the deaths of her father and brother, spiraling into drugs and alcohol. But then the heiress had come to the IT department when the her phone had glitched, and somehow it ended with her bringing Felicity lunch the next day. And now Thea spends more time in Felicity's spare bedroom than she does at home, marking the days on her calendar until she turns eighteen and can move out of her huge mansion and into the world's smallest bedroom.

Felicity just attributes that to the whole grass-is-always-greener thing.

The one rule she has, though, when it comes to Thea is that she never mentions Oliver or Robert Queen by name unless the girl does first. So instead of starting a crying jag where it isn't needed, Felicity wraps her arm around the Queen heiress. "Maybe we'll start a new tradition," Felicity tries instead. "Staying sober through the world's most awful Christmas party with a Jew." It does the trick; Thea laughs. "Or we could stay long enough to put in appearances," she hedges, "and then go back to the house for Thai and a Disney movie. Or a musical." Felicity tilts her head to the side. "I'm in the mood for something cheerful."

"Make it that musical with the masked guy that you've been talking about and I'm there," comes Thea's counteroffer, and Felicity can't help but think the girl would make an excellent CEO for QC someday—she's surprisingly good at negotiating. And, like all good negotiators, she knows not to take the first offer that she's given.

The blonde computer technician grumbles, but it's halfhearted at best. "I said something cheerful, Thea," she complains. "That movie doesn't end well—I told you that." The brunette only fixes her with a look, and finally Felicity caves. "Fine," she grumbles, "but you get to stay here and do the drunken meet-and-greet while I get the car."

Thea smiles as though she's won something, looking a little too smug for her friend's liking. But Felicity likes seeing the smile on the kid's face; she doesn't smile as much as a seventeen-year-old should. So the blonde lets her enjoy the moment of thinking she's won. "Deal," the heiress says after a long moment. When Felicity starts stomping away, she calls in a sing-song voice, "Love you, Felicity."

"Yeah, that's what you say to all the girls," Felicity calls back with a smile, weaving through her drunken coworkers to the elevator.

Halfway through the elevator ride, she starts to regret wearing her heels for this; her feet already hurt and it's a long walk back to her parking space in the garage. When she steps out, though, an ominous feeling hits her, and she remembers why she tries not to work late if she can avoid it. Parking garages are creepy at night, making her paranoid in ways she shouldn't be.

It's not helped by the fact that a guy has been lurking around the house recently. She hasn't said anything to Thea about it and she certainly hasn't called the cops, but Felicity has seen the same guy standing around too many times for it to be coincidence. He keeps a hood pulled up over his face, but there can't be that many people running around in dark hoodies with wide shoulders and perfect posture running around her quiet little neighborhood.

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, deciding that she's paranoid. Still, it makes her walk a little faster to her car, picking up her pace as she tries to get to her car, all the way across the lot and parked in the dark. Even as Felicity tries to warn herself that it's simply her overactive imagination again, she finds herself hugging her coat tighter around her, pulling her purse in closer to her body. And really, the hairs on the back of her neck should not be standing up like this.

With a sigh of relief, she finally reaches her car, hand shaking for no reason as she goes to fish out the remote and keys from her purse. She drops it as she does, bending over to grab them. That feeling of dread should have already gone away by now; Felicity has no idea why she still feels on edge after getting to her car. All she has to do now is put the keys in the ignition and—

And when she stands up, a hand grips over her mouth, stifling her reactionary scream.

As the guy pulls her against him, she notices a few important things. First of all, he smells like rotting garbage and she's going to have to shower multiple times to get that smell out of her hair. The second is that Garbage Guy has a gun pressed against the middle of her back. Something tells her this isn't going to end well, and that makes her swallow hard.

What she does next is completely reactionary; if she'd watched someone else do the same thing, she would have cringed. But she does it anyway, stomping the heel of her shoe into Garbage Guy's foot. He screams and releases his hold on her, kicking into the second part of Felicity's fight-or-flight reaction.

She runs like hell.

She doesn't know how she expects to get anywhere in the heels she's wearing, but Felicity tries anyway. As she goes, she reaches down to slip them off without slowing, running barefoot across the parking garage. (That shower is definitely happening now.) She can hear the guy chasing her, muttering curses under his breath as he does so. Damn it, she should have gotten in her car and driven away. If she'd done that, she could've called 911 and pray her windows held.

Finally remembering that she should probably call security, she attempts to dig her phone out of her purse when it happens. Suddenly Garbage Guy isn't chasing her anymore, blindsided from the left by something moving way too fast to be human. She hears the gun go off once, twice, and then a third time, and she jumps as each rings out. Her feet start moving toward them, but, at the same time, she's terrified of what she might find.

Felicity then stops to catch her breath and wave her hallucinations away, but then the second guy—her savior, she supposes—throws a punch that sends Garbage Guy flying across the room like the bad guy in an old action movie with exaggerated acting. Superman walks after him like a panther stalking its prey, with long, purposeful strides.

It's only then that she realizes he's wearing a dark hoodie, with wide shoulders and perfect posture.

Suddenly fatigue washes over her with a feeling of helplessness, and, against her desires, she collapses against the railing with a shaky sigh. Slowly she lets herself sink to sit down on the floor of the parking garage, trying desperately to catch her breath. The guy in the hoodie stops abruptly, immediately turning toward her, this time moving slower and with more hesitance.

"Are you okay?" he asks her in a soft voice, his tone more gentle than she expects. Felicity assumed it would be rough, like him, but it's quiet and light. "Did he hurt you?" He takes a few steps closer, but they're controlled, as if he's trying not to startle her.

He might make her a little nervous with that hood pulled low over his face, but she thinks that if he meant her harm, he would have done so by now. "I'm fine," she assures him, squinting to stare at the man in the darkness. All she can see of his face from here is the dark stubble on his jaw, which is hardly helpful. Then she notices his hands are shaking, just before he stuffs them into the pockets on his hoodie. "I think I hurt him more than he hurt me."

He stops then, and Felicity can only assume the guy is studying her from under that hood. "Those shoes could be considered deadly weapons," he agrees, and something about his tone makes Felicity think that the guy is mocking her a little. "Next time, maybe you should try screaming or running first," he suggests with a note of sarcasm. It causes her irritation to flare up, but it dissipates somewhat when his voice softens. "But I'm glad you weren't hurt."

Finally he starts walking forward again, this time stepping toward her and offering her a hand. Felicity can't help but notice that it's still shaking for reasons she can't quite understand. She knows he could probably hurt her, but she's willing to trust him. Slowly, she takes the offered hand, feeling the calluses on his. He pulls her upright as though she doesn't weigh anything, stepping back immediately when he's sure she's on her feet.

As she drops her shoes to the ground to put them back on, he starts to leave, passing under one of the security lights. Only then does she remember that she forgot to thank him. "Wait," she calls, making him turn back to her. "Thank you," she offers. He nods in response, and the motion jars the hood over his head enough for her to finally get a glimpse of her protector.

He's not really in the light, but there's enough of it that some of his features are illuminated. Blue eyes bore into hers, set over a nose that looks like it's been broken before. His square jaw comes into view better, and, as he turns, she notices that a long, thick scar that stretches from the space behind his right eye all the way down to his chin.

All too soon, he adjusts the hood over his face, shadowing it again before turning back around to keep walking away. It might not have given her a long look at him, but it was certainly long enough for her to recognize his features in the otherwise dark parking garage. At first she doesn't believe it, but Thea has that picture of her and her brother taped to the fridge, so there's really no way Felicity could fail to recognize Oliver Queen. He might have aged a little, toughened up a lot, and gained a scar behind one of those beautiful blue eyes, but there's no question in her mind that she's staring at the man who used to be one of Starling's most notorious playboys.

"Oliver?" she breathes out, just above a whisper. There's no way he should be able to hear her, but he stops immediately, looking back over his shoulder at her. "You're Oliver Queen, right?" she tries a little louder. "I mean, I don't know you—I've never met you or anything—but Thea practically lives in my spare bedroom. I've seen pictures. She misses you, you know."

He turns around to face her, taking a few steps back toward her. "Oliver Queen died five years ago," he says in a quiet tone, careful and controlled. Under different circumstances, she'd think she was wrong, but there's something about his voice that makes her think she hit the mark. "And it's better for everyone if he stays that way." There's a very long pause before he finally adds, "Do you understand?"

Felicity knows when someone is asking her to keep her mouth shut. Her thoughts turn in another direction, though, and she blurts, "You know it's not healthy to talk about yourself in the third person, don't you?" Her words catch up to her after a moment and she cringes. "Which is my way of saying that I won't say a word about this." She knocks her fist against her leg. "But that's probably hard for you to believe since I'm babbling. I think it would hurt Thea to know—provided she even believed me. So I'll keep it quiet."

"Thank you," he says, and she's surprised that he seems to mean it. He seems to hesitate before stepping backward, and if Felicity didn't know better, she'd think that was a smile on his face. "And not just for keeping quiet. You've been looking out for Speedy for the last three years when I couldn't. Thank you for that, Felicity."

Her breath catches when he says her name, surprised and maybe a little wigged out by that revelation at the same time. Apparently he's been keeping tabs on his sister since his return to Starling City, and Felicity isn't sure if she wants him to know her name. Now it seems a little too real. "I guess that guy I saw lurking around my house was you," she realizes slowly. He inclines his head slightly, and she takes that as a yes. "Thank God," she breathes with a sigh of relief. "I thought I was going to have a repeat incident of that stalker lacrosse player freshman year. At least I don't have to worry about you trying to break down my door."

As he disappears into the shadows again, he chuckles before assuring her, "I'd just pick the lock."