#cooper seldon

She sits there, in Walter’s office with Isabel Rochev. Walter’s looking at her with nothing but kindness, but Isabel leans against the credenza with a stack of photos in her hand, looking at her with nothing but cruel amusement.

Felicity would have figured that Isabel, a fellow woman, would at least be a little sympathetic. But then again, she should have known better — robots aren’t really capable of sympathy.

“I’m not going to fire you,” Isabel announces, as if she were being benevolent.

Walter’s mouth twists in indignation. “I just told you, that’s not her.”

“I just told you that I’m not going to fire her,” Isabel shoots back.

“She’s got a contract,” Walter reminds her. “What are you talking about?”

Isabel smirks. “I’m glad you brought that up.”

Felicity closes her eyes as Isabel starts reading the clauses from her contract. Walter sets down his glass of bourbon and continues his full-throated defense.

“It was photoshopped,” he says over Isabel’s recitation. “It’s her head on another woman’s body.”

But it’s not, Felicity thinks. The minute she saw the pictures, she knew they were real. She can see the tiny little mole on her shoulder, and the scar from when they took out her appendix. It’s her in the pictures.

She struggles to hold onto her tears as fiercely as she can. She refuses to cry in front of Isabel, of all people.

“ — contempt, scandal or ridicule, which might tend to reflect unfavorably — “ the woman continues.

Walter bristles. “She doesn’t need to hear her morals clause!”

He’s right about that. She doesn’t need Isabel rubbing it in her face that she trusted the wrong guy. Again.

“ — on the program or any sponsor or any station that broadcasts the program,” Isabel finishes with a flourish. “Congratulations, you checked all the boxes.”

“Are you deaf?” Walter demands. “She just told you it’s not her body, Isabel!”

Isabel must have reached the end of her patience, because she raises her voice to match Walter’s. “Then she needs to stop wearing that fucking necklace, Walter!”

Felicity flinches. She can feel the gold resting against her chest, and she thinks that at any moment it will take on a life of its own and contract around her neck to choke her.

She wishes it would.

“It’s the same one she’s wearing in the pictures,” Isabel continues. “The images have been scrutinized by not one but three graphic experts who have reached identical conclusions. Skin coloring is a match, the shadows are a match. Is there a blending issue? No.”

Isabel goes through her list and Walter looks up at Felicity. She can feel the kindly man’s eyes on her and she burns with shame anew. The man is like her own father, and she feels like she’s disappointed him as well.

“The hue is a match, the pixelation is consistent throughout, resolution is consistent throughout.”

Felicity’s had enough. She can’t take it anymore.

“Stop.”

Her voice is hoarse because she hasn’t said anything in hours. She hasn’t been able to get a word in edgewise at this meeting, but even if she could, what could she really say? She’d been robbed of her speech, which was a first for her, probably in her whole life. She’d been robbed of everything.

“It’s me. I lied. I’m sorry.” Her voice gives out in the last sentence.

Isabel smirks again and goddamn it if this woman doesn’t have the ability to make her worst nightmare feel like hell on earth.

“Felicity, this wasn’t a stalker pointing a camera through a peephole. You posed for these.”

The sentence itself is a declaration. But the way they leave Isabel’s mouth, it’s pointed at her like an accusation.

“So what?” Walter shoots back.

But she can’t let him keep standing up for her like this. She knew he’d stand by her until he died, but she didn’t want to bring him down with her.

“I understand,” she murmured.

“I didn’t hear you,” Isabel prompts.

Yes she did. She did hear her. She just wants Felicity humiliated even more.

“I understand,” Felicity repeats. Then she takes a deep breath.

“I was seeing a man over Christmas — ”

“You don’t have to explain,” Walter interrupts kindly.

“I can’t tell you how much I wish that were true,” Isabel counters. “But she has to explain enough for me to be satisfied there aren’t more of these out there!”

Well she’s fucked then.

“There are more,” Felicity says quietly.

Isabel lets out a breath. Then she crosses her arms over her chest and stares at her. Waiting.

So Felicity tries again.

“He consults for AIG. We’d been seeing each other about six weeks. And he got a suite at the Mandarin Oriental for Christmas Eve. I bought him a camera. A nice camera.”

Walter looks pained as she continues. “All right,” he tries to interrupt, like it’s finished.

But it’s not. Now that she’s started, she has to keep going.

“We’d been drinking, and he wanted me to pose. And...you know, I did. For fun. Just for us.”

God, she was such a fool. There were so many different times when she could have stopped it. If she hadn’t agreed to spend the night with him on Christmas Eve. If she’d stopped at that second vodka tonic. If she’d said no when he asked her to take off her bra as he uncapped the lens of his camera.

“Last night, I broke up with him.”

Isabel looks at her critically. “Have you heard of this site, Revenge Porn?”

“I have now,” Felicity deadpans.

Walter decides to step in again. “Why can’t you file for injunctive relief and get the pictures down?”

Isabel shakes her head. “The pictures are up everywhere. They have their own Facebook page.”

“Then she sues for defamation,” he continues stubbornly.

“She posed for the pictures.”

“Copyright.” He’s grasping at straws at this point.

“It was his camera. She gave it to him. He owns the pictures and it doesn’t look to me like she was doing anything against her will.”

“I wasn’t,” Felicity says. That’s for sure. She had willingly let him take those fucking pictures.

Walter’s eyes are so sad as he looks at her, and it makes Felicity wonder how he can still see her the same way now that he’s seen her stripped completely bare. How anyone in the bullpen will be able to see her the same way anymore.

Isabel takes her phone out of her pocket and checks it. Without looking up, she asks, “Are you on TV tonight?”

“Yeah, in about two hours.”

Whatever’s on Isabel’s screen must be amusing to her, because she cocks her head to the side and smirks.

Then she finally looks up and says, “You’re trending number one, Felicity.”

There are a lot of things going through Oliver’s mind as he walks through the the doors of his office, fresh from the last rundown meeting before they go to air. The first thing he has to do is get the misquote corrected before it spirals any further. That’s his number one priority.

But there’s another niggling little thought in the back of his mind that’s been fighting to come to the forefront all day. He’s been viciously pushing it back, refusing to even it enough light to become a full-fledged musing.

It doesn’t make it easier to ignore.

Not bothering to flick the light on in his office, he grabs the phone on his desk and holds the handpiece up to his ear. Then he starts dialling.

The line rings four times, then goes to voicemail. Figures.

“Phillip. It’s Oliver Queen,” he begins. “Call me back at the office, and if you call between ten and eleven, tell them I said to put you through to the control room. We’ve got to fix this.”

When he’s finished with his message, he hangs up the phone and turns to walk back out of his office.

But a voice stops him.

“What happened?”

“Jesus,” Oliver starts.

He glances over and realizes Felicity’s sitting on the floor by his bookshelf. She’s hugging her knees to her chest and she’s staring straight ahead like she does when she’s on air and she’s reading off the teleprompter.

But when he takes a closer look, he realizes that her lovely blue eyes have turned red and puffy, and there are tiny rivers of mascara running down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry I’m down here,” she murmurs.

Oliver has never seen her like this before. Felicity is a force. She commands any room she stands in, with confidence and pride. Her sitting curled up in a ball in the corner of his darkened office is wrong. The wrongest of wrongs.

Though it’s not like he doesn’t know why.

He hasn’t looked at them. He heard about it from someone else, and of course all of his non-journalist dude friends were passing around the link to the site like it was cocaine at a Playboy Mansion party. But he refused to click on it.

He has never wanted to see anyone naked more than he wants to see Felicity Smoak, but refusing to look at the pictures is the easiest thing he’s ever done.

“It’s all right,” he answers as he slowly approaches.

If you ask anyone, they would tell you that Oliver Queen is the last person anyone would ever turn to for emotional trauma. He’s terrible at comforting. He never knows the right thing to say. He usually ends up making everything worse.

But damn it, it’s Felicity. He has to try.

He stands in front of her, but for once, her eyes don’t glance to him. She’s still staring straight ahead, unseeing.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugs. “Just hanging out.” Her voice is light, as if nothing is wrong. “Grant’s in my office. Our office.”

Oliver shakes his head. Felicity’s one of the most well-known faces for ACN. The fact that she didn’t have her own office by now was baffling.

“You shouldn’t be sharing an office anymore,” he tells her.

“I don’t mind,” she answers with a tiny smile that does nothing to lift the sadness from her face. “I like Grant, and he’s usually in D.C. He brings his dog in sometimes. A basset hound...always looks very puzzled. Just confounded. But working on it, you know?”

Her voice starts to break, and so does Oliver’s heart.

“Just...everybody, slow down and let me catch up, because I’m down here.”

Her chin quivers and the tears start overflowing again. Every muscle in his body screams at him to rush to her, to wrap her up in his arms and hold her until her body stops shaking, until her eyes run dry. Until her mind is at peace again.

He knows better, though. He keeps his hands to himself, even though it’s the last thing he wants.

She shakes her head, still looking straight. “There’s no way to see this coming,” she says in a quavering voice. “He’s a really nice guy.”

Then her voice completely disappears in a ragged whisper. “I totally trusted him.”

Oliver can’t take it anymore. He gives into his longing to be closer and slowly approaches her, until he’s standing just two feet away. But still, he doesn’t touch her.

Felicity starts sobbing, though he can see she’s trying like hell to hold it in. It’s like she’s trying to stay strong, but every bit of her is breaking apart.

He can’t bear to see her like this. He wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to stay strong for him. He wants to tell her that it’s OK for her to fall apart. He wants to tell her that she’s safe.

But all that comes out is, “It’s all right.”

He’s lost track of how long they’ve been in his office.

At some point, he finds himself sitting down right next to Felicity. Though he still has to struggle to keep himself from touching her, he finds that this is a decent compromise. They both have their arms wrapped around their knees as they stare ahead, sitting mostly in silence.

Sometimes she breaks the silence with whatever errant thought pops into her brain, and it makes him wonder for the millionth time just how fast her brain processes things. He thinks it might be faster than the speed of light, because one moment she’ll tell him a story from her childhood and the next minute she’s trying to explain why subprime auto loans are going to be the next bubble to burst.

Right now she’s telling a joke, like she’s trying to cheer the both of them up.

“A lion’s walking through the woods. He comes up to a zebra, and the lion says, ‘You know something, zebra? You are a ridiculous looking animal. You’re half white, half black, half horse, half donkey. Look at me — I’m rough, I’m tough, I’m the king of the jungle.’ The zebra just shrugs and moves on. The lion comes to a giraffe, and the lion says, ‘You know something, giraffe? You are a ridiculous looking animal. You’ve got a long neck and little horns. Look at me — I’m rough, I’m tough, I’m the king of the jungle.’ Lion comes to a frog and says, ‘You know something, frog? You are a ridiculous looking animal. You’re green and slimy.’ And the frog says, ‘Hey, fuck you! I’ve been sick!’”

Oliver can’t help it. He lets out a chuckle.

Felicity smiles a little at his reaction, but it disappears pretty quickly.

“You’ve got to get your show ready,” she reminds him.

“I’m all right,” he answers.

She sighs. “At some point I’m going to have to call my mom.”

“Do you have to?”

There’s a brief pause before she answers him.

“She keeps a scrapbook on me. She Googles me every morning.”

He looks over at her. There were so many layers to how fucked up this whole situation was, so he searched for the right words that would make her feel better.

“She’s going to understand.”

Felicity lets out a huff of breath and shakes her head.

“She will,” he insists.

“Not deep down. No one will.”

Her voice drops into a whisper, and her eyes deaden. “This is who I am now.”

Oliver refuses to believe that. Felicity Smoak is so much more than a group of naked pictures some dickbag posted on the internet. Yes, she’s beautiful. Yes, she’s smart. But she’s also kind. Compassionate. Warm and funny and one of the most amazing people he’s ever met in his life.

She is so much more than this.

He finally asks the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue all day.

“What happened?”

Her eyebrows furrow. “You mean...how did he — ”

“No.” He doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t want the details. He doesn’t think he could bear to hear the details. “No, was it a bad break up? I didn’t even know you were going out with someone.”

Her frown deepens and her voice goes mechanical. “He was a very well-respected analyst. We met at a Forbes party. And no, I didn’t think it was a bad break up. He wasn’t very upset about it.” Then her voice raises slightly and he can see the indignation on her face. “But even if it had been, this — this would be OK?”

Oliver shakes his head, immediately regretting the implication in his words. “No. No. Absolutely not.”

“What the fuck!” she exclaims. “I am feeling...so intensely something that I don’t know what it is!”

Oliver pauses before he answers. He certainly knows what he’s feeling.

“Rage.”

There’s another pause as they process together.

“Do you want me to scrap you from the rundown?” he asks. He understands completely if she does. She’s supposed to interview a high-profile financial guy that Oliver hardly pays attention to, but at this point he would let her do anything she wants.

“Yes,” she answers without hesitating. “I’m not going on TV and interviewing — the guy, he’s — he’s the chancellor of the Exchequer. You can’t … “

She can’t finish her sentence, so she starts over. “He should have Tommy.”

His heart breaks again, for what feels like the millionth time. Or maybe the million and first. He’s lost track.

“OK.”

He gets up from the floor and walks to his desk so he can make the call to his senior producer and tell him to get Felicity off the rundown. But just as he’s dialing, she speaks up again.

“I bought him the camera,” she says conversationally. “It was a good camera. I asked a couple of our freelance guys for help.”

She closes her eyes. “I miss still photography. Though...not so much lately.”

He can’t take it anymore. He needs to do something. His body is screaming at him to spring into action, and since he can’t hunt down the bastard and beat the living daylights out of him, and he also can’t reach out and hold her close, he settles instead for making the call to Rory and asking him to change the rundown so Felicity isn’t on the hook for an interview on her worst day ever.

After he hangs up, he turns around and sits back down next to her.

“Anyway...you’re feeling rage.”

Felicity shakes her head. “I’d love it if I was. I’d give anything to feel rage. I’d jump the humiliation, and I’d be able to get up. I think I live here now.”

He lets out a breath. “I wonder if I were able to promise you that humiliation always turns into rage.”

“How long does that conversion take?” she asks. “How long is the evolution? How long does it take to get from the larva stage of this, to — how long does it take?”

It’s Oliver’s turn to shake his head. The return of the babbling might be a good sign. Or it might just be her trying to distract herself from everything.

“I guess it depends,” he answers. “Like for Germany, it was fifteen to twenty years. But Wile E. Coyote, he…”

Felicity chuckles a little and so does he. “He has a fast turnaround.”

The smile drops off Felicity’s face as quickly as it came, and a long silence stretches between them.

“I want to die,” she whispers.

And all Oliver can say to comfort her is, “I know.”

She’s been sitting there for almost an hour and a half. She knows she should leave. Oliver’s got a show to prepare for, and he’s got five minutes to fill now that she’s not coming on to do her interview.

She should leave. But she can’t bring herself to get up.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, she’s sure. But it also could be that Oliver’s sitting right next to her, and his comforting presence makes her feel less like ripping her own skin off and more...well, more normal.

“Is this the right time to ask why you date men like this?” he asks.

“No,” she answers.

“It’s not?”

“It’s not the right time.”

“All right.”

“Because you don’t know they’re like that until they are.”

He shakes his head. “But they are a lot with you, it’s just — ”

“There’s no way to tell, Oliver,” she interrupts him quietly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe that.”

He doesn’t get it. He’s thinking like a guy. Guys categorize women into groups, usually crazies versus non-crazies. Guys think they can tell just by looking. But women know better.

“You don’t,” she says flatly.

“I don’t believe that someone who is capable of this, that a shithead this big is able to keep it a secret from someone they’ve been dating for seven weeks.”

Felicity’s face falls and her arms go to cross over her chest. “You’re saying I knew he was like this, but didn’t care?”

“I’m saying you don’t have a very high opinion of yourself, and I don’t get it.”

No, Felicity thinks. Of course he doesn’t get it. But it’s not entirely his fault — he’s a good guy, after all. He fundamentally can’t understand it when other men aren’t.

Oliver seems to have broken through a barrier that held back what he’s really feeling, because he keeps going.

“And since this is also not the right time, let me also say that if it had been a woman who had done this, her friends would be saying, ‘You go girl!’”

She snorts. He’s trying to prove a double standard where none exists.

“I promise you, he’s getting that right now from his friends in arbitrage.”

After all, dickbags flock to one another. They come together in groups and high-five and congratulate one another after they’ve committed particularly dickish acts.

“No,” Oliver shakes his head. “Deep down, they think he’s an asshole.”

Oh please, Felicity thinks to herself.

“He’s an asshole right on top.”

He tries to explain himself. “Oh no, they — his friends in arbitrage — ”

“Yeah, I know,” she interrupts him. “I was making a joke.”

A tiny smile creeps up over his face. “You’re really…”

He trails off, and Felicity glances over, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

“You’re impressive,” he murmurs.

She realizes he’s looking at her with an intensity she’d never seen before, and if it had been any other day, her heart would be fluttering and there would be butterflies blooming in her stomach.

As it is, she can hardly feel any of that through the thick blanket of despair and humiliation.

---

Eventually Oliver has to leave to produce his show, but he doesn’t kick her out. He insists that she stay in his office as long as she needs, and so she does. The bullpen might have cleared out for the most part, since Right Now with Tommy Merlyn at ten o’clock is the last show of the day, but she still doesn’t want to have to face the people who are lingering.

So she turns on the TV to watch the broadcast. Tommy does the interview she was supposed to do, and he does it well enough. But he neglects to ask the follow-ups. It’s not his fault — Tommy’s not a financial analyst, and it’s certainly not his forte either.

Felicity knows she would have done a better job. And she knows that it really should have been her sitting in that chair instead of Tommy.

And all of a sudden, she feels a deep, flaming anger bloom inside her chest. Fucking Cooper. He is the one who kept her away from the studio. He is the one that made it almost impossible for her to do her job. A job she is damn good at, thank you very much.

He’s the one who deserves to suffer humiliation. Not her.

The show finishes up and fifteen minutes after Tommy signs off, Oliver is back in his office.

“Good show,” she tells him with a small smile.

“Thank you,” he answers, returning it.

“No, thank you.” It’s an inadequate phrase. How are two words supposed to encompass all the gratitude she feels toward him?

But it’s all she has.

“I think I’m done in here,” she tells him. A plan starts to unfold in her mind, and the smile on her face turns vengeful.

She knows what she wants to do next.

Oliver waits outside the conference room. It’s one of the more impressive ones he’s seen around New York, but of course it would be — this is AIG, after all.

Felicity’s standing in the doorway, her back straight and her eyes clear. She wiped the mascara tracks off her face in the cab on the way there, and he swears he’s never seen a more beautiful woman without a speck of makeup on her face than Felicity Smoak.

“Excuse me,” he hears her say. “Cathy told me to come on back. Cooper, can we talk for just one second? I’ll have him right back.”

The next thing he hears is a soft, “excuse me” and the creak of a chair, followed by the shuffle of footsteps as the asshole stands up and walks toward her. Oliver shakes his head — this Cooper guy must be stupider than he though, if he isn’t getting up to run in the opposite direction.

What follows is probably one of the most cathartic experiences he’s ever witnessed.

He sees a little of it from the doorway. Once Cooper is standing just a few feet away from her, Felicity swings her high-heeled foot and kicks him right in between the legs. Cooper lets out a groan of pain and doubles over, but Felicity isn’t finished. She rears back her arm and punches him right in the face.

Straight wrist and all.

A vindictive pleasure washes over him as he sees Cooper fall to the floor, blood spouting from his nose. Sure, Oliver wishes he was the one who could make the asshole bleed, but he also recognizes the need for Felicity to do it herself.

Plus, the smirk on her face is totally worth it.

“I made it to the rage phase,” she says as she pulls out her phone and snaps a picture of her ex-boyfriend lying on the floor, clutching his crotch and bleeding all over his face.

Once she’s finished, she straightens up and strides right out of the room. She hardly glances his way as she walks past him, but her smile is enough to light up the whole room.

He hadn’t been lying when he told her she was impressive.

A few seconds later, Cooper struggles into a standing position and tries to follow her out. Seeing this, Oliver gets in his way and holds out his hand.

“No, no,” he says with a smirk. He will never, ever speak with Felicity Smoak again.