Technical Assistance

Chapter 41: Software Patching

Sitting down next to Roy with the cart, she answers, “No, you don’t.” Roy’s eyebrows shoot up higher than before, if it’s even possible. “I’ve seen you patch up your own wounds before, and I’m not subjecting Roy to that sort of trauma. We’re trying to help him, not torture him.”

Roy thinks he might be hallucinating when the Vigilante’s mouth turns up slightly for a brief moment. His hand catches Felicity’s arm for a moment. “I can talk you through it,” he offers slowly, “if you need me to.” Something in his expression and posture makes Roy think that he doesn’t particularly like the idea of Felicity getting her hands dirty.

Felicity takes it well, her arm pulling out of his grip so that she can place her hand over his shoulder and a soft smile lighting her face. “I remember,” comes the assurance, and then she points to the seating on the other side of the van. “You can sit over there and try not to look menacing—I think you’re scaring him.” With some sort of cough-like sound, the Vigilante does as she asks, taking the order surprisingly well for a guy who’s known for putting arrows in people.

She leans over next to Roy, pulling back his already open shirt, exposing piece of gauze over the top of the wound. Her eyes flick up to his for a moment, then back down as the beginning of a smile playing at her lips. “You’re staring,” she mutters to him absently, peeling back the gauze with careful fingers. “He doesn’t bite, you know.” Louder she continues, “At least, not that I’m aware of. You haven’t bitten anyone recently, have you?” The tone in her voice turns mischievous, as though inviting the Vigilante to join in with her good humor—a ridiculous thought, at best.

Roy watches, a little mystified, as the corners of the Vigilante’s mouth tick upward for a second. “I’m not Mike Tyson,” he answers dryly, following another cough that Roy realizes is a chuckle. “I put the fear of God into people, but I don’t bite them.” It’s almost surreal to hear the sarcastic humor coming out of the man that Starling City has learned to fear over the past few months, and Roy has to blink twice to make sure he isn’t imagining this whole thing

Felicity winks at Roy. “See? You have nothing to worry about,” she assures him, and the banter makes him miss the needle until he feels the liquid being released next to the wound. He tries to look down at it, but Felicity turns his jaw upward, away from the injection site. “No you don’t. I remember the thing you have with needles. It’s just lidocaine—a local anesthetic.”

The needle comes out before she releases him, and he turns his attention to her now, curiosity getting the better of him. “You work for the Vigilante?” he asks her finally, and then he can’t help but chuckle because this is exactly the Felicity Smoak he remembers from foster care. She may be blonde and a self-described corporate lapdog now, but he remembers her defiance and tendency to favor fairness over Mrs. N’s rules. “Of course you do.”

“With,” the synthesized voice corrects immediately, making Roy jump a little. “Felicity works with me. She’s not my subordinate—she’s my partner.” It surprises him a little how quick the Vigilante is to defend her.

What surprises him even more is when Felicity responds, “He’s the Arrow, not the Vigilante—only the newspapers call him that.” Roy notes that both take exception with the statement for the other. “Remember when I told you I’m a hacker in a past life?” she asks suddenly. “I just neglected to mention it wasn’t a past life.” Roy gapes at her. “So, yes, I work with the Arrow. And, on nights like these, I’m glad for it—God only knows where you’d be if I didn’t.”

Roy knows exactly where he’d be, and he supposes Felicity does, too: lying dead wherever the Savior took his victims. It’s something he doesn’t want to think about, and instead he latches onto a different thought. “You asked him to save me?” he asks, more surprised by this revelation than the last. He grew up forgotten and ignored, so the idea of anyone caring that much hits him hard with some sort of emotion he tries to push down.