Chapter Text
Everyone in the world is born with a unique mark on their wrists. The mark contains the first words one will hear his or her soulmate say.
There are some that are marked with everyday phrases such as “Hello”, “Thanks”, or “Can I sit here?”; they have to hold their breath every time they hear their words with the anticipation that they are seconds away from facing their soulmate. Some are marked with bad jokes or pick up lines; they have to deal with the constant snickering by strangers and teasing by their friends and family about their future soulmate. Few people are blessed to know who their soulmates are from the second they are born; their soulmates’ names are written across their wrists in an introduction, and they never have to worry about searching for their perfect match.
From the minute children could understand what their marks said, they were excited to meet their soulmate. That is, everyone except Felicity Smoak.
Instead of dreaming of fairytale kisses with an imaginary version of her soulmate like every other girl her age, Felicity had been scared of her soulmate for as long as she could remember.
Everyone at school flaunted their marks by wearing short-sleeved shirts and tried to find their perfect match among the other kids on the playground. Felicity hid her mark as best as she could so as to avoid the inevitable pitying looks from the teachers and awkward six-year-olds staring at her mark for too long.
Because as soon as she was born, her wrist had been branded with the ominous words “Let her go, or I will put an arrow in you!” written across her right wrist.
* * *
When her beautiful blonde-haired and blue-eyed daughter was nestled in her arms for the first time, Donna Smoak could not believe her luck. Despite not being born with a mark, she had found love in a man named Noah Kuttler. Even if he had bailed on her as soon as he found out that she was pregnant, she would do it all over again if it meant she got to hold her little girl in her arms.
While she was holding her baby for the first time, she did what all new mothers did; she checked Felicity’s tiny wrist for the words that would be stamped there for the rest of her life, only to be greeted with a threat.
An apparently psychotic archer was the last person she would want her precious girl to end up with, but the fates had spoken, and she was just going to hope they knew what they were doing. Her life had worked out fine, and they hadn’t even decided to pair her up with her perfect match.
But Felicity had a man waiting for her somewhere who was going to fall in love with Felicity in the same short amount of time that she had. She wanted her daughter to be happy, and if it took a bow-wielding maniac to do so, then she would accept him with open arms. But would Felicity?
* * *
As soon as Felicity understood what her mark meant, she went straight to the only person she could always count on: her mother.
“Mommy, why does my wrist have mean words on them?” said a three-year-old Felicity as she came bouncing down the stairs. Donna Smoak looked down towards her daughter in shock. She had done everything she could in order to protect her daughter from finding out herself and from the inevitable scrutiny by everyone in society if Felicity ever revealed her mark.
“Honey, how do you know that?” said a worried Donna, who hoped to keep her daughter blissfully unaware for at least until she was old enough to see how valuable her soulmate mark could be. All Felicity saw were words that had no connection to her future; they were just always on her.
Felicity looked up with her large blue eyes at her mother and replied, “I know how to read, Mommy. Why are they mean words?”
Donna sighed. She could not believe that she had to explain to her three-year-old about the uniqueness of her mark in comparison to other little girls.
“Well,” she explained as she kneeled down next to her daughter, “those are the first words that your soulmate is going to say to you.”
“What’s a soulmate? And why is he so mean to me?” Donna’s heart broke at the question. She had hoped that she would be able to explain what a soulmate was and the connection to Felicity’s mark before her daughter understood what the words said. She had done all she could to spare her baby from despising her soulmate before she met him, but in the end, it was useless.
Her daughter’s brain developed too fast for Donna to have the six or so years of peace she wished she had. She explained everything to Felicity, from the meaning of a mark to her lack of one.
“So my soulmate is a bad person,” Felicity whimpered as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Donna’s heart broke for a second time that day as she explained, “No, honey. He is just not going to be the nicest person when you finally meet him. But you just have to meet him, sweetie, and you’ll see that the fates don’t make mista-”
Her consoling was cut off when Felicity ran up the stairs to her room and slammed the door. Donna Smoak had never had a worse day in her life than the one when her daughter became scared of her soulmate, and there was nothing she could do about it.
* * *
Felicity Smoak had hated her soulmate for as long as she could remember, even before she met him. She did not want to have any sort of connection with a man who had caused her nothing but fear, anger, and trepidation ever since she learned of him.
At first, she had been scared of her inevitable soulmate, but this horror eventually morphed into rage: rage at the fates for forever tying her to an apparent murderer, rage at her mother for condoning her soulmate’s behavior if only for the sole fact that they are meant to be together, and rage at her soulmate, whoever he is, for making her afraid of him before they’d even met. She wanted nothing to do with him, and she made every effort she could think of to avoid archery at all cost.
She spent most of her teenage years dressed in long-sleeved black tops and cargo pants to cover up her mark. She wore heavy makeup, complete with plum lipstick and became the queen of darkness throughout her high school and college years to avoid everyone who wanted to talk with her about soulmarks. She became obsessed with computers because they were the only thing that she could interact with without getting asked questions about her soulmate, and she became obsessed with hacking because it was the only thing that she had full control of in her life.
When she was fourteen, her mother tried to set up sessions with a soulmate councilor in order to make her more open to the idea of being paired with someone for the rest of her life, but Felicity just avoided going as best as she could. She wanted to get away from the idea of soulmates, so she decided to become the best student her high school had ever seen, if only so she could get the frack out of dodge.
Her efforts paid off because she was accepted into MIT when she was sixteen and she became one of the youngest pupils that they had ever accepted. She moved across the country from Las Vegas to Boston and threw herself into her studies, as well as joining a hacktivist group. She tried to spend as much time as she could actually being busy, so she would have an excuse when her mother called her weekly and asked if anything changed about her wanting to find out about her soulmate.
This got Felicity thinking; she wanted to know exactly who and what her soulmate was. She didn’t want to meet him, but the best chance she could to stay away was to know exactly where he was and leave a wide berth. She had to figure out who the fates had paired her with forever.
Felicity decided to use the information she had gathered from her mark to do as much research on archery and bow-wielding maniacs as she could between her classes at MIT. But, she didn’t want to alert her mom of her change in attitude because once Donna Smoak knew that her daughter finally acknowledged her soulmate, there was no going back.
* * *
After extensive research brought on by her constant curiosity, she came to the conclusion that archery was utterly ridiculous if only for the fact that it was not medieval times and bows and arrows are entirely impractical.
As for her research on archers, the only results that came up were professionals who had never gotten in trouble with the law; even anything as bad as a parking ticket was absent from their criminal records, information which she could be sure of as she hacked into every known alphabet database in the United States hoping for a clue as to who her soulmate was.
But, even with the illegal access and substantial research, she could not find anyone who even came close to matching the personality she sensed in her soulmate.
So, as much as she didn’t want to, she forgot about her soulmate and focused her time on the more important things in her life, mainly her life after graduating MIT. Most major companies like Wayne Enterprises, Kord Industries, and Queen Consolidated wanted her because she had managed to graduate at nineteen with a Master’s in Cyber Security and Computer Sciences: a feat no one had accomplished before her.
But, with her unconventional look, she figured she would be under harsh scrutiny from everyone else at the company besides the CEOs who recruited her themselves.
So, she decided to change her attitude and look to one not so easily distracted by pesky things like soulmates; her ebony hair was dyed a honey blonde, her cargo pants and graphic tees were exchanged for long-sleeved dresses and blouses with skirts, her makeup became lighter, her lipstick substantially pinker, and she tried to make herself professional to please every company that wanted her. She even stopped hacking altogether, only using her computer for IT work.
In the end, she chose Queen Consolidated because it was the furthest away from her old Vegas life which she tried to ignore as best she could despite the constant phone calls from her mother, who still lived and worked in the same places and who still called her weekly to talk about her soulmate.
* * *
Her first three years in Starling City were spent mainly in her small cubicle in the IT department, or watching Doctor Who in her townhouse, interacting more with the pizza delivery guy than anyone else. She had no time or need to worry about who her perfect match was; she was perfectly content in her self-deemed “nerd bubble”. It wasn’t until the Hood came on Starling City’s radar that she even remembered that she had an assumed bow-wielding murderer as a soulmate.
When she had first heard the news of a vigilante in her city who acted as a Robin Hood, bow and all, preying on one-percenters who exploited the rich, she had nearly dropped her favorite Tardis coffee mug in the rush to turn up the volume of the television.
“Once again, the vigilante dubbed ‘The Hood’ has murdered one of Starling City’s richest businessmen; this time, Andrew Garcia is the unfortunate victim. Garcia was found in an alley at the intersection of Fletching and 3rd Street with an arrow in his heart at about 3 o’clock this morning. Police are continuing their investigation into the identity of this hooded murderer,” the newscaster reported.
Felicity stood frozen, her mouth open in a perfect “O” shape. Her soulmate was the fracking vigilante! She was sure of it! How many other maniacs wielded a bow and arrow in the city she called home? She needed answers, so she called in “sick” to work and spent the day researching the Hood.
He had appeared in Starling City less than a month before and had first made headlines for saving not one, but two billionaire playboys: Tommy Merlyn, whose father owned Merlyn Global, another company that wanted to recruit her, and Oliver Queen, whose mother owned Queen Consolidated and who had been thought dead for five years after a boating accident on a business trip to China with his late father.
The vigilante had apparently targeted the city’s rich through death by arrow ever since his appearance and had killed over fifteen of Starling City’s richest. Felicity could not believe her luck. Her soulmate was not only a cold-blooded murderer, he was a serial killer.
She began putting all of her effort into finding out who her soulmate was, but came up with nothing. If she was tied to this man for the rest of her life, she was making sure that she did everything she possibly could to figure out his identity. Felicity set up an alert on her phone to warn her of any news reports or updates on her assumed soulmate and tried to correlate his appearances with any other data, but to no avail.
She tried to stay out of trouble so as to avoid the supposedly inevitable encounter she would have with the Hood because, despite searching for his identity, she wanted nothing to do with a killer, even if he was her soulmate. She had every intention of discovering his identity and avoiding him for all eternity.
But, as Felicity’s luck would have it, this plan failed within a month of being implemented.
* * *
In her defense, Felicity made every effort to stay out of the areas in which the Hood was most active. She drove her car to and from her home in the Glades, the poorer, run-down section of Starling City, everyday and avoided walking alone and at night.
But, when her red Mini Cooper broke down two months after the arrival of the archer, she had no choice as to make the sketchy trek through the Glades to her townhouse from work after dark.
Felicity regretted staying after typical office hours to help fend off a cyber attack on the servers if only for the fact that she was deviating from her plan of never putting herself in a position to meet the Hood, but it couldn’t be helped; on the plus side, her bank account would thank her for the overtime cash in no time. She stuck to well-lit streets with the hope that she could make it home without attracting too much attention despite the fact that she was an attractive, well-dressed blonde walking alone in the most run-down portion of Starling City.
But, this plan did not last long as she was less than three blocks from her home when she was grabbed off the sidewalk and pulled into the nearest alley.
Her first reaction was to scream at the top of her lungs as her assailant, who she assumed was a man due to the amount of brute force dragging her, pulled her alongside the filthy garbage cans and strong mildew stench of the alley.
Her second reaction was to try and fight the man using the free movement of her legs, which only resulted in him yanking her head back by her ponytail, causing tears to spring to Felicity’s eyes. He placed a knife at her throat, making her seize up in fear, and the sound of his rough, gravelly voice in her ear was enough to make her shiver.
“Where are you going alone this time of night, pretty thing?” He paused to stroke her cheek with his index finger which caused Felicity to sob harder.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you, just as long as you stay still and quiet. I don’t want to attract any attention, now.” He continued to stroke her cheek as he ran his nose over where her neck connects with her shoulder and inhaled.
In this moment, Felicity’s thoughts did not stray to her soulmate; they were only focused on this man and this alley, and she feared what would happen to her after he had his fill of her. She was going to be raped, or killed, or both. Someone was going to find her body in this alley. Someone would have to call her mom about her. Her poor mother who just wanted to keep her daughter safe. She would be-
Her thoughts were interrupted suddenly when an arrow was shot into the brick behind her just two inches from her attackers ear. Both her and her attacker stiffened in surprise as her savior jumped from the fire escape attached to one of the surrounding building’s side that he was perched on and landed directly in front of them. It was the vigilante!
In all of her life, she had never seen a sight as intimidating as the Hood in full getup with a bow in his hands and an arrow pointed at her would-be rapist. Her eyes widened in surprise as his obviously modulated voice emerged from under the dark green hood and contained the words that would change her life forever: “Let her go, or I will put an arrow in you!”
Oh frack!