Neighbour

An: I do not own Arrow.

Summary: Felicity accidentally discovers the identity of the local vigilante but he has no clue that she knows until he comes home seriously injured one night and she decides to intervene. Olicity AU.

It was 2:00am in the morning on a Thursday and Felicity Smoak was wide awake. She was lying on her bed binoculars in hand staring out through her open curtains in to the back yard of the neighbour that lived behind her. The house she rented with her best friend, Dr. Caitlin Snow had a small back yard bordered by a fence. Behind the fence was a storm drain that separated their house from the house behind them.

Six months ago, after a particular nasty breakup with her then idiot boyfriend, she was nursing a gallon of mint chip ice cream in her room alone. The lights were off and she was seated on the floor at the side of her bed staring out the open window into her backyard when she saw a figure jump out of the drain onto the neighbour's wall. The full moon allowed her to watch the hooded figure jump down and stroll calmly to the back door of that house. The person stopped at the door and looked around but didn't notice her. He or she opened the door and stepped inside.

Felicity could not believe what she was seeing. Someone had just broken into her neighbour's house. A burst of adrenaline shot through her system and her heart started to beat faster. She started to reach for her phone when the figure turned on the lights in the house before closing the door. With the lights on, she could make out the green hoodie and the bow and arrows on his back she hadn't noticed before. It was the local vigilante!

She couldn't sit still. She stood up and started to pace her room. She had read all of the stories about the vigilante. He brought bad people to justice in their city; people who the police department couldn't touch. Sure he had killed a few people but karma said they had it coming to them. Why was the vigilante in that house? She looked over to see the lights were still on. She ran to her dresser and started digging through her items looking for the binoculars that her naturalist ex-boyfriend bought for her when he took her bird watching in Yosemite National Park.

She returned to her window and tried to focus on the window next to the door. She bumped her glasses against the lens of the binoculars and realized she had to take it off. When she tried to look through the binoculars again she had to adjust the focus. By the time she did all of that the lights downstairs had been switched off. She threw the binoculars on the bed in frustration but then noticed that the lights upstairs turned on. Did he go upstairs because his prey was upstairs? But why turn on the lights? Wouldn't it be easier to surprise his target in the dark? She tried to remember who lived in that house but up until tonight she had never paid attention to the view from her bedroom window. Was it a family? Was it a mobster?

She started to bite her nails in anticipation. Any moment now, he might run out of the house after doing what he came to do. She waited and waited and eventually the light switched off but the back door never opened. Maybe he went through the front door. How was she going to find out what happened? She started pacing again but knocked over her ice cream which had still been sitting on the floor forgotten. The melted ice cream spread quickly across her wooden floor. Felicity cursed and ran into her bathroom for a towel to wipe it up. Their landlord would charge them if they damaged anything.

After she cleaned it up, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the house. There was no movement inside and no police sirens in the distance. She stared until the first rays of sunshine broke the horizon. She heard the shower in Caitlin's room turn on meaning her friend had an early shift at the hospital she was interning at. Felicity had already decided to call in sick to work. The idiot ex worked at the same company as her and there was no way she was facing him today. She was a coward.

After Caitlin left and Felicity had a shower she decided to go over to the house and check it out. She put on the pair of sneakers she had brought six months ago to exercise and had never worn. With her exercise clothes on and her sneakers on her feet, she set out at a brisk pace to the end of her block. She would have to take an adjoining street and then walk up the street that was parallel to hers behind her house. By the time she reached the end of her block, she was breathing hard. She really needed to work on her fitness. She reduced her speed to a slow stroll.

When she turned on to the neighbour's street her heart started to pound. The house she was looking for should be the fifth one on the left. There were no police vehicles outside so either the Vigilante left the person with only a warning or no one had reported the person missing yet. Her palms started to sweat the closer she got to the house. What if she was the only person that knew the vigilante had paid the owner a visit last night? What if the person was lying in a pool of blood on the floor slowly dying and her speaking up could save the persons' life?

The house slowly came into view and everything about it looked normal. No marijuana plants on the front lawn, no gangster car in the driveway, no weapons scattered about. It looked like every other suburban house in her neighbourhood. A runner in a grey hoodie breezed past her and she jumped in fear. Where the hell had that guy come from? She thought she heard him laugh at her. How dare he! If he weren't running she would try to catch up to him and tell him off. Suddenly he stopped and walked into a yard to stretch. That was the perfect opportunity except he went into the yard that was part of the premises that the vigilante had visited the night before.

Thinking it would be unwise to tell off a man that the vigilante had visited, Felicity calmly walked passed the house. The man was in the process of stretching out his right thigh. From what she could tell, he seemed to have a great body under that track suit. She wondered if the vigilante had a hard time threatening him. Maybe he was a bodyguard for a mobster and the vigilante needed information from him?

By the time she reached back to her house, her mind was racing with a gazillion questions. Her neighbour was a mystery and mysteries needed to be solved. She was determined to find out what he was into. If the vigilante had warned him about something she was determined to keep an eye on him on behalf of the vigilante. She was a citizen of Star City too and she could do her part to keep crime down. She set about creating a detailed plan to figure out what her neighbour was into. In a way, it gave her something else to obsess about other than her idiot ex, telling her she wasn't good enough for him.

Three nights later, she was sitting in her room with the lights off obsessing over how she was going to find out his name when the back door opened and the vigilante walked out. It was after 11:00pm. Had he been in there hiding all this time? Was this his safe house? Was the fit guy that ran past her the vigilante? The only way to know for sure was to wait up and see if he returned. It was nearly two in the morning when he returned.

Her neighbour wasn't a bad guy, he was the vigilante!

The revelation changed her life. She was pretty sure she was the only person in the city that knew who he was. She believed in the vigilante and she wanted to help him. He didn't have a schedule and all of his sightings were random. She had previously tried to find a pattern in them but the programme she ran the data through told her it was indeed random. She wanted to find a way she could help him. She set up a hidden camera to monitor the movement in her neighbour's back yard. She then ran the footage through an algorithm that would let her know when he went out on patrol. There were no traffic cameras in her neighbourhood but she could monitor the ones nearest the city to see which way he was headed.

Some nights she picked him up other nights she didn't. Tonight was one of those nights that she didn't find him on the traffic cams and she was forced to wait up to make sure he was safe. Movement caught her eye on the fence. Someone was hanging half on, half off the fence. That wasn't right. The person barely got their feet over before falling on the ground below the fence. After a minute or two they got up and started slowly walking to the back door. The silhouette told her it was the vigilante but something was seriously wrong.

He leaned heavily against the door before it opened. He reached inside and accidentally flipped on all the lights instead of only the one inside the house. The light on the porch switched on and illuminated the blood that he left on the door. The binoculars fell out of Felicity's hand. He was injured!

"Caitlin," she screamed running out of the room to her friend's bedroom. She threw the door open and found Caitlin already sitting up with worry all over her face.

"He's injured. We have to help him," Felicity said in a panic.

"Who's injured?" Caitlin asked slowly. She was still half asleep and had no idea what had her friend so hysterical.

"Put on some clothes," Felicity instructed before she looked down at herself. "Wait I need to put on clothes too. I should have never changed out of my clothes. I should have waited until he was home safe," Felicity said running out of Caitlin's room back to her room. She pulled on the nearest jeans and shirt she could find. She returned to Caitlin's room to find that her friend hadn't moved an inch.

"Didn't you hear me! He's injured. We have to help him," Felicity said running around Caitlin's room looking for clothes for her friend to put on.

"Who is injured?" Caitlin asked again.

"The vigilante. He's hurt. There's blood on the door. We have to help him!" Felicity insisted.

"Felicity," Caitlin said calmly.

"Look Caitlin, I know what you're going to say. You've said it many times over the last few months that my obsession with the vigilante isn't healthy. It's why I took up walking on the weekends so that I would have a healthy hobby. I know who the vigilante is. I've known for months and he needs our help. Can we please help him?" Felicity pleaded.

Caitlin huffed, "Ok," she said grabbing her jeans from Felicity's hands.

"Great, I'll get your medicine bag and get the car keys," Felicity said running out of the room.

Two minutes later she was pulling up in front of the vigilante's house.

"Felicity, isn't this the house right behind ours?" Caitlin asked.

"Uh yeah. How else do you think I figured out who the vigilante was? I caught him sneaking in one night," Felicity said grabbing the medicine bag and running down the side of the house to the back. She hoped the back door was still open.

Thankfully it was and she found the vigilante unconscious on the floor just a few feet away from the open doorway. He must have collapsed once he reached inside. Felicity switched off the porch light and ushered Caitlin inside. Her friend was wary of the vigilante so Felicity took the first step towards him.

"Hello," she said.

There was no response from the green clad figure. "I'm here to help you. I'm just going to get this bow and arrow away from you and then we're going to check you for wounds ok," she said but there was still no response.

He was a lot heavier than he looked. He was probably all muscle. Felicity didn't know how she did it but she got all of his weapons off of him and his hoodie. His chest and abs were impressive but she was more focused on the deep gash on his side. There was an awful lot of blood. Caitlin pulled on her gloves and they set about their task of keeping him alive.

Oliver's eyes slowly opened and he stared at his ceiling. Cool, he had survived somehow. When he passed out on the floor last night, he thought that was the end of his life. His first mistake had been a fatal mistake. The gang leader he had been targeting, Tobias Church, had been expecting him. Oliver had discovered the week before that Church was Mr. Big in the Glades. He was responsible for 90% of the drugs that came into the city. Oliver knew if he could take him down then it would be a huge blow to the criminal underworld in his city.

He had easily broken into the man's headquarters and that should have been the first clue that something was wrong. He had grown over confident and cocky with all the success he had over the last few months. They trapped him in a corridor and seven men tried to kill him. He was lucky to get away with just the stab wound to his side.

"Hello," a soft voice to his right said.

He sat up quickly but a sharp pain on his right side caused him to re-evaluate that action.

"Careful you're going to rip your stitches. Caitlin and I spent all night on that," the voice reprimanded.

He looked over to the chair opposite his couch and saw the blonde that he knew lived behind his house. She always had the curtains to her bedroom window open and he would see her on her laptop doing something. Occasionally a guy used to come over and then the curtains would be closed. The curtains haven't been closed in the last six months so he assumed she and the guy were no longer together.

When she had the lights on at night he would see her chewing her lip as she focused on the computer. He wandered what it was she did on the computer. Was she a gamer? Was she on facebook or twitter? Was she on a dating website and busy talking to multiple men at once? Was she watching a show? It intrigued him how she could stay glued to that thing for so long. He couldn't last more than five minutes.

He was surprised the day he first saw her walking on his street. He had purposely masked his steps when he ran passed her to startle her. Her response left him laughing. He stopped on his front lawn to stretch and watch her walk passed. He never did that but he wanted to get a good look at her. He only ever saw her seated on her bed with a laptop in front of her. He wasn't usually into blondes but there was something about her that drew his attention. She seemed quite interested in him too. He noticed after that she started walking passed his house on weekends. She always looked in but he kept himself hidden in the shadows. After she passed his house, he would follow behind her to make sure she got home safely. Even though their neighbourhood was supposed to be a safe place, you never knew who you would encounter. He had saved many women in the Glades from being gang raped and it would hurt him to know she was hurt and he could have prevented it.

The last place he ever expected to see her was on a chair sitting opposite him in his living room.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. He could see that she was genuinely worried about him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her. No one was supposed to know his secret.

"You were injured last night. We guess it was a knife wound to your side. If we didn't help you, you would have bled out," she said.

"How did you know?" he asked confused. He slowly swung his feet off the sofa and then rested his back against the sofa for support. He was now facing her head on. The blanket that was covering him had now pooled around his waist and his bare chest was exposed. Well not all of it, there was a large bandage around his mid-section.

She blushed lightly and Oliver decided he liked the sight.

"I've kind of been keeping an eye on you. Just to make sure you're safe and you don't get caught. I believe in what you do for the city," she said surprising him.

"You've been stalking me?" he asked.

"Not exactly," she said picking at an invisible speck of dust on her jeans. He tried not to notice the stains of blood on it. It was probably his blood. "I saw you one night come home and then I saw you another night leave so I knew you were the vigilante."

"How long have you known?" he asked. He came and went at late hours. Her bedroom light was never on. He always assumed she was peacefully sleeping.

"Six months," she stated calmly.

"Six months!" he said in astonishment.

"Yeah," she said with a slight smile.

"And you never reported me?" he asked curiously. Despite the fact that he worked for the betterment of the city, the SCPD had a modest reward out for information on the vigilante.

"It's like I said before. I believe in you and you're lucky that I do or you would have been caught long ago. The police have been close a few times," she said.

Oliver remembered the times he thought they had him only for them to go the wrong way as if some magical force guided them away.

"That was you!" he asked in surprise.

"Yeap," she said popping her p.

"But how?" he asked.

"I'm good with computers. I just put a few fake reports in that you had been sighted in the opposite direction and they went that way. I also removed you from the camera network and I arranged for the blood you left at your most recent visit to be accidentally destroyed in the police crime lab. Your secret is still safe," she assured him.

"That's remarkable," he said.

She blushed furiously under the praise.

"I'm Oliver," he said rather dumbly.

"I know," Felicity said with a smile. "Your mail is on the kitchen counter."

"Oh," was the only response he could muster. His brain was failing him epically but he was going to blame it on the blood loss from the night before.

"Right so this is how it's going to go. It's stressful as hell to keep track of you on the city's camera network so you are going to wear some type of GPS tracker so I know where you are. I also think you need some type of comm device so that if you're injured again you can call for help instead of dragging your half-dead-ass back here."

He was opening his mouth to tell her she was crazy, that she had no place involving herself in his business but she cut him off.

"You mister owe me your life and in some cultures that life is now mine. You are going to let me help you or tomorrow you might wake up and find that you no longer have any money, any credit or any assets. Do you understand?" she stated fiercely.

His gut told him she meant every word of her threat. He swallowed. "Yes,"

"Great," she said standing up from the chair. "My number's programmed into your phone. It's under Felicity. I'm going to get some antibiotics and food for you and then I'll be back. Call me if you need me," she said walking away.

He slowly lay back down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. Last night he had been a solo operation and this morning he woke up to discover he now had a partner. Life truly was strange. He picked up his phone, which she had left for him on the coffee table, and scrolled down to the contacts under F. Felicity. He tested the name on his tongue he liked the way it rolled off his tongue.

In less than an hour she was back with medicine, more bandages and food. He hadn't realised that he had been unconscious for over 12 hours and it was late afternoon. He was surprised that she liked Big Belly Burger. Most women watched their figures and avoided that place but Felicity appeared to really enjoy her burger. She changed his bandages for him and they started talking about how he got injured.

At the end of his story, she excused herself for a few minutes and then she returned with her laptop. She somehow got her hands on the layout of the warehouse he had been in the night before. By the end of the night they had a new plan to bring down Church but she made him promise that he couldn't attempt to execute the plan until he was 100% and her terms she had stated earlier were satisfied.

Caitlin loved her roommate dearly, she honestly did but Felicity was driving her crazy. It was not that Caitlin minded being on standby medical help for the vigilante. She was absolutely fine with that. She had seen the victims of crimes in the ER and she had seen persons saved from terrible fates by the vigilante. There was no doubt in her mind that Felicity and Oliver were doing something good. No, what annoyed her was the fact that despite Oliver having an entire house to himself, he chose to spend the majority of time in Felicity's room!

Caitlin was happy her friend had found someone that adored her but did Caitlin really have to hear how much he adored her! It was time for Felicity to move out. She and Oliver would be fine living in his house. Oliver was a good man and he worshiped the ground Felicity walked on. He broke the nose of the idiot ex-boyfriend that told Felicity she wasn't worth it. The idiot was lucky that was all that happened because she had seen Oliver the night he found out and he looked ready to commit murder. There was no doubt in Caitlin's mind that when Felicity moved in with Oliver it would be permanent.

Caitlin had finished her interning and joined her mother's practice. With no medical school bills to pay, since her mother had paid for everything, she could afford the rent on her own now. Besides there was this really cute engineer that worked in the office upstairs that had asked her out. They had gone on a few dates and Caitlin was contemplating bringing him back to her house one night but Felicity and Oliver definitely had to go.

Yes, tomorrow Caitlin would sit Felicity down and inform her that she was upgrading her from roommate to neighbour.

An: This is the fifth of eight one-shots. The last three will be posted next week.