Anything But Ordinary
Chapter 14
Chapter 14
“Welcome back.”
Oliver blinked, his eyes adjusting to the brightness of the lone overhead light. His head pounded, a dull ache in the back of his skull and behind his eyes. Trying to move, he realized his wrists were tied behind his back as he sat slumped in a chair. He tugged at the bonds to no avail. Straightening, he glanced around, the space reminding him of some type of interrogation room. His hood was down, and dark glasses had been removed. “Where am I? Where’s Chloe?”
Tess stepped into his line of sight, directly in front of him. “You’ll see her soon enough. In fact, I’m looking forward to witnessing the reunion.”
Oliver lurched forward in an attempt to rise from the chair, discovering quickly that he was bound to it. “What the hell are you talking about? I want to see her. Now.”
“You’re in no position to be demanding anything,” Tess’s smile was oddly indulgent. She leaned in toward him, her voice deep and taunting. “Oliver.”
Anger narrowed his eyes, and stiffened his jaw. “What do you want?”
“Aside from the crystal you’ve stolen? Nothing. I’ve already gotten what I wanted from you a long time ago, haven’t I?”
“I don’t have the crystal. Take me to see Chloe.”
“Apparently neither one of you has the crystal, we’ve searched you both… quite thoroughly.” Tess suddenly grasped a handful of his spiky blonde hair, yanking his head back. She bent over him, her face close to his, as though she would kiss him. “Where is it?” she hissed.
Stiffening, Oliver boldly met her eyes. “I don’t know,” he growled.
“You’re lying. But I think I know how to get you to tell me the truth.” Tess released his hair, and then called to her guards. She replaced the glasses over his eyes, and lifted his hood before they entered the room. “The Green Arrow would like to see Ms. Sullivan. Take him to her, but don’t let him near her.” She turned to Oliver once more. “Try anything, and Ms. Sullivan will pay for your actions.”
They escorted him through a corridor, stopping in front of a door to another cell, larger than the one he’d been in. A cot ran along one side of the wall, and there was a sink and toilet opposite. Before he’d entered he could see her through the window in the center of the room. Chloe was sitting in a chair, her head hung forward so that her chin rested on her chest, her golden hair tousled, covering her face. Her hands appeared to be bound to the chair behind her, her ankles also tied.
“What have you done to her?” he asked, his panic rising. He thought there were what appeared to be bloodstains splattered on her blouse.
Tess unlocked the door and entered the room, allowing him to follow. She addressed her guards. “Don’t let him get near her,” she reminded. Once the door was closed, the guards slammed him against it, so that he faced Chloe several feet away. Oliver, too oblivious to the guns pointed at him, too in shock to protest, his eyes never left her. She wasn’t moving.
“Chloe?” She made no response to his voice, and Oliver’s pulse beat frantically.
When Tess was satisfied that Arrow was firmly surrounded, under the threat of three security guards with guns drawn and aimed at him, she then moved next to Chloe, placing a thumb and forefinger under her chin, lifting it so that some of her hair fell away, revealing Chloe’s face.
Oliver felt as though he’d been gut punched, and had the wind knocked out of him. “What have you done to her!” Oliver demanded, shouting, pushing his weight forward away from the door, and shoving his way toward Chloe. His heart, deeply pained, felt as though a knife had been plunged into it. Pain quickly turned to rage, and heedless of the men around him, not caring about the guns trained on him, he thrashed about, trying to get to her, struggling against the bonds that held his wrists behind his back. His feet were not bound however, and he surprised them with a powerful kick to one of the men closest to him, sending the man sprawling against the heavy porcelain sink. He thought he heard Tess barking orders, shouting, and the voices of the guards, but Oliver didn’t care about anything else, his rage blinding him, a crimson haze surrounding his vision.
They had beaten Chloe senseless. Her face a mass of blood, her left eye was swollen shut. Emitting a deep feral growl, using his weight, he drove his body into another guard, slamming and flattening him against a wall. The third guard came at Oliver from behind, delivering a blow to the back of the head with the butt of his gun. Lights exploded behind Oliver’s eyes, shock and pain filling his head, and he fell to his knees.
Tess’s voice finally registered. “That’s enough! Do you want her dead?” Tess shouted over the din, the barrel of her own pistol pointed flush against Chloe’s temple. “Do you?” She cocked the weapon, and Oliver, panting in defeat, ceased his fight, his gaze upon Tess beneath the dark glasses, venomous.
His lips thinned. “Bitch,” he spat.
Tess smirked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The guards recovered, taking up their positions once more, surrounding him on three sides. Tess holstered her weapon, and then brushed Chloe’s hair aside so that he could get a better view of her battered face. “It was her own fault, Mr. Arrow,” Tess went on unaffected, moving to stand behind Chloe’s chair. “Ms. Sullivan seems quite taken with you, she’s very protective of her Emerald Archer. Seems your girl is quite the fighter. We had to remind her more than once who was in charge here.”
His gaze remained on the small unconscious woman slumped in the chair, her head lifted for his viewing. “What do you want?” he snapped, yet unable to hide the anguished hitch in his voice.
“I told you, I want what you stole from me.”
“I don’t have it.”
Tess gripped Chloe’s hair at the back of her head, tipping her head further in a threatening gesture. “Who does?”
Oliver swallowed convulsively, his eyes never leaving Chloe’s face, his heart wrenching painfully. He’d promised to take care of her, and failed. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying!”
“We looked for the crystal. We didn’t find anything.”
“Why did you want it?”
“Chloe thought we could use it to find Lex,” he lied.
“You knew she was helping me search for Lex?”
“Yes.”
“Why wouldn’t she simply ask me for it?”
“She knew you wouldn’t give it to her.”
Tess couldn’t argue that, it was true after all. She would never have given up the crystal. She eyed him speculatively, and after a moment, she released Chloe’s hair, causing her head to fall forward once more. Rounding the chair deliberately slow in her steps, she stopped to stand directly in front of him, her eyes hard, peering down into his dark glasses. “I think I like you on your knees,” she taunted, lifting a finger to stroke his chin. “Does she bring you to your knees, Green Arrow?” Her words were spoken softly, yet laced with vehemence. Tess continued to touch his face with gentle fingertips. “It’s good that you have no secrets between you, except for one, perhaps.”
Oliver loathed her touch, yet remained still and silent. His only thought was for Chloe, wondering how long she’d been unconscious. He wasn’t certain how her healing ability worked when it was her own body that was injured. She needed medical attention. He wondered what had happened while he was under the influence of tranquilizer. How had it come to this? Why had they beaten her so cruelly? He vowed to get her out of here, wherever here was.
“She wanted me to stay away from you, and I agreed that I would allow you to lead your pathetic double life in peace, on the condition that you stay out of Luthorcorp business.” She brushed his full, bottom lip with a forefinger. “She broke that promise tonight.”
“She made you no such promise.”
“You trust her too much.”
“She’s worth trusting.”
“Unlike me, you mean.”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Yes, and I’m filling some pretty big shoes now, aren’t I? It could have been you instead of Lex, you know. We could have been good together.”
And then Oliver knew. Chloe would have fought against them, but it was Tess’s jealousy that had incurred Chloe’s severe beating, and Oliver didn’t know whether to feel hatred or pity for the poor excuse of a human being standing over him at this moment. “In your dreams.”
Tess laughed derisively then. When she recovered, she addressed her guards. “Bring something for lover boy here, so that he can clean her up, and let him have some quality alone time with his unconscious woman. It may be the last time they see each other.” Her cold eyes fell to Oliver once more. “You will tell me who has the crystal by morning, or you’ll never see her again. She’ll do quite nicely locked up in a facility using her talents to work for me. And you… well, I may have a little fun with you first before I kill you, and believe me this time I’ll avoid the ineffective poisoning, and simply shoot you dead. It’ll be messier, but much quicker.”
Tess swept from the room then, leaving the guards to untie him. One man returned with an empty basin, cloths and a first aid kit, leaving it on the cot. They left, closing and bolting the door behind them.
Oliver rose from his knees, pulling down his hood and removing his glasses, setting them on the edge of the sink. Disguise didn’t matter much now anyway. He closed the short distance to Chloe, moving behind her to undo the rope tying her hands. Her wrists were raw, evidence of her struggles. Kneeling in front of her, he untied her ankles, then reached for her, catching her up as her body fell forward against him. Wrapping his arms around her, he picked her up, set the basin aside and lay her gently upon the cot. He gazed down at her face, brushing away strands of blonde hair stuck to her bloodied cheek, assessing her wounds, his gut clenching at the sight of such beauty so cruelly marred. Oliver blinked away the heat rising to his eyes, and grabbed up the basin to fill with water.
Kneeling beside her, he began to gently clean the blood away, some of it drying, caked in her nostrils, around her mouth, over her eye.
“My fault…” she whispered, the cool water and his gentle ministrations rousing her.
“Shhh…”
“I’m so sorry, Ollie. Stupid…” her breath caught in her throat, as she tried to stifle a sob. “I’m so stupid,” she berated herself, her fists balling up the gray blanket covering the cot beneath her.
“You’re the smartest person I know,” he murmured reassuringly, dipping the cloth into the basin to rinse the blood from it, then renewing his work, dabbing away more blood from her face.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I kissed you back.”
“I distracted you.”
“I let myself be distracted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, angel,” he soothed. “They must have seen us already to be so close. And at least they don’t know about Boy Scout.”
As he cleaned her face, he noted that some of her wounds appeared to be healing already. Her left eye was not as swollen, and she was able to open it somewhat.
“How does your healing ability work?” He asked gently, dipping the cloth into the basin once more, then squeezing out the excess water before cleaning away more blood from her face.
“It’s accelerated,” she answered softly. “I heal faster than normal people do. A day or more, and all visible signs of injury should be gone.”
“But not the invisible ones.”
“Those take longer,” she agreed. “In that regard, I’m normal I suppose.”
He nodded in understanding, tipping her chin up, to clean the blood around the crease of her eye.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nothing my hard head can’t handle,” he answered.
“When is she coming back?
“In the morning. But I’m hoping we’ll find a way out of here before then.”
“What happens in the morning?"
Oliver hesitated. Concentrating instead on carefully removing caked blood from her eyelid.
“Ollie?”
“She’s threatening to lock you up in some facility.”
“And you?”
Oliver rose from her side, avoiding her question. He dumped the bloodied water into the sink, and refilled the basin. Returning to her, he resumed his work, cleaning up the last remnants of blood from her face, then patting her dry with a clean cloth.
Chloe reached for the hand next to her face, holding it. “Oliver.”
He looked away from her. “She wants me dead.”
Chloe gave his hand a squeeze. “Not gonna happen.”
Oliver leaned over her, and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead. Chloe lifted her hand, threading her fingers into his hair where she felt the knot at the back of his head. Her hand glowed momentarily, healing him of his minor injury.
Oliver felt her warmth spread through him, his pain easing, his head clearing. “Hey. Cut that out, Tower,” he admonished softly. “You’re cheating.”
She smiled, and then winced, her lips hurting. “Too bad. Get used to it.”
“Get used to it, huh?” His forehead resting gently against hers, he slipped his fingers into her hair, smoothing the soft strands between his fingers. “Does that mean…?”
“It means you’re stuck with me now, Arrow,” she finished for him, gently massaging his scalp where his wound had been.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it… the healing part, I admit it makes me feel uncomfortable…terrible actually, when you do it for me,” he confessed, his voice low and husky. “But being stuck with you, Chloe, is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He lifted his head a few inches to gaze down at her, his dark eyes caressing her sweet face, cut up, battered and bruised. He wanted to tell her the words, but he wasn’t certain how she’d react, and this place, their predicament just didn’t seem the right situation, or the right time to tell her. Maybe he didn’t need words at this moment; maybe she knew what he felt.
Soft fingertips moved to stroke his cheek lovingly. Chloe saw the heart rending tenderness of his gaze, making her own heart melt. She returned his stare with one of intense longing. She thought it almost amusing that two could share such a moment considering their current circumstances, and yet it was so natural between them, as though they were simply sharing a tender moment somewhere else, lying together in the sand on a secluded beach, instead of on a cot in a dank cell.
He smiled down at her, his eyes lowering to her swollen and cut lips, vaguely wondering how it was that being with her could lighten his heart and give him hope even in the most dire of circumstances. “I want to kiss you so badly right now, but I can’t”
“Yeah well, kissing got us in trouble in the first place, remember? And stop making me smile, it hurts,” she winced again, in her attempt at not smiling. She lowered her voice to a purposeful whisper. “Besides we have to figure a way out of here, Archer, and for all we know the cell is bugged, and there’s a video camera in here somewhere for Tess’s viewing pleasure.”
“There’s a disturbing thought.” Oliver moved to stand long enough to scoot her over, scooping her up in his arms, taking a seat on the cot, his back resting against the wall. He settled her next to him, an arm around her waist, pulling her back to recline against his chest. Chloe’s head fell back, fitting against the curve of his shoulder, she felt so tired and weary, and her body still ached miserably.
They sat quietly for a time, until she spoke. “The door locks from the outside and there’s a guard posted.”
Oliver took a moment to survey his surroundings. “There’s no window. My weapons are gone.” He felt her small hand cover his, stroking the fingers that splayed over her stomach.
“They took your gloves too?” she asked, as though just now realizing they were gone.
“And my voice distorter.”
Chloe suddenly bounced her butt lightly on the cot. “Springs, not slats.”
“Huh?”
“If there were slats holding up the cot, we could use them as weapons. Like a club. I don’t think we could spring anyone to death.”
Oliver pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then resting his cheek there, he continued to think. There had to be some way they could escape.
The cell door opened suddenly. “Isn’t this a pretty picture,” Tess mocked. “But I’m afraid the honeymoon is over. There’s been a change of plans.”
At the sound of her voice, Oliver lifted his head from Chloe’s. “What do you mean, change of plans?”
Tess appeared uneasy. “We’ve got to get out of here.” She strode toward the sink to retrieve Oliver’s glasses, tossing them to him. “Put them on. Hood up.”
Oliver did as she instructed before four guards entered the room, also seeming hurried and agitated, guns immediately drawn on the couple.
“Tie them up, get them to the van immediately.” She turned back to Oliver before she reached the door. “Don’t worry, Green Arrow, I didn’t forget our arrangement. I wouldn’t want to forgo the pleasure of killing you myself.” With that, she left the room.
“Tell us what’s going on,” Oliver demanded from one of the guards, as he helped Chloe to stand.
“Just come along quietly, and don’t give us any trouble. We have strict orders,” the man said curtly, moving to tie Chloe’s hands behind her back, another guard grasping Oliver’s wrists.
An unearthly scream, unmistakable could be heard echoing through the corridors.
Chloe and Oliver looked at each other in the same instant; the bruises and swollen features couldn’t hide the sheer terror on her face. Chloe could barely breathe. “Oh my God.”
End Chapter 14
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