I Don't Mind A Little Trouble, Part 4
Title: I Don't Mind A Little Trouble
Author: FlyingHigh / latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama / Adventure
Pairings: Chloe/Oliver, back-ground Lollie
Spoilers: for Luthor
Warnings: For language, since all these characters have potty-mouths when I write them. Also, this is un-beta'd.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, and I am receiving no money for this story.
Summary: Sequel to Of All The Towns in All the Worlds in All the Parallel Universes, You Had to Walk Into Mine. After Lionel's disappearance, alt-universe Oliver is suspected of his murder. Fortunately someone pays a call to help clear his name.
Author's Note: There's some spoiler-ish speculation based on Masquerade in this one.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7
“On mission I'm called Watchtower.”
That was interesting, he thought. She had a code name, which meant she had a team of her own. It made sense. But it wasn't the answer to the question he had asked. “And when you're not on mission?”
“But we are.”
“But you call me by my given name.”
“I...” More exasperation. It was cute on her. “Chloe. My name's Chloe.”
“Just 'Chloe'? That's a little diva-ish, don't you think?”
“Chloe Sullivan.” Score. She was giving him a harder look now, closer to real anger, but nothing he couldn't handle. He was on a roll.
“Why do they call you Watchtower?” he asked.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
He shrugged. “I have to. Dinah doesn't tell me anything.”
“That's for a reason,” she said patiently.
A prickle of irritation - the real stuff, the kind usually reserved for whiny bankers and corrupt cops - tightened his jaw. He was a grown man who ran a multi-billion dollar corporation and had single-handedly brought multiple criminals to justice, and they were supposedly on the same side. He repeated that to himself and then told himself to smile. “Well, on our team, we try to match the name to the person. I'm thinking you're more of a Gazoo.”
“Gazoo?!?”
“Like on The Flintstones? Appears out of thin air, messes around, and disappears again?”
“That is what you think I do?”
“Well, in my dimension it is.”
“Did you …” she paused, as if searching for just the right way to finish that question, then continued: “...fall on your head at some point in your childhood?”
“Hey, I'd call you 'Watchtower' if I thought it was appropriate.”
With that, she stomped out of the bathroom.
Okay, so maybe he was being a little obnoxious. But not any more than was necessary. If she wanted to win she was going to have to work for it.
“It is, not that you would know,” she was saying. Following the clunking sounds into the bedroom, he saw her pulling an iPad out of her bag.
“You're right about that.” She was huffy now, and he had a hard time not grinning for real at the snotty little look she gave him.
“Huh.” She plopped down on the bed and began tapping on the screen. “Well, it just so happens that today it's so literal you'll laugh.” She held up the iPad and he saw a view of the sitting room from what looked to be the top of the print over the couch. She tapped the screen and it changed to a view of a service elevator. She tapped the screen again and it changed to an alley where a couple of short men in hound-sooth pants and stained aprons stood smoking next to a dumpster. He sat on the bed next to her as the three images condensed to fit on the screen together.
He sat, leaned over her shoulder and caught another whiff of the orange scent. “It looks to me like you're either a voyeur with the most boring fantasies possible, or -
“I do mission oversight. Today, as I said, it's pretty literal, but most of the time there are other aspects to it: logistics, intel, communications.”
The two guys by the dumpster threw their butts into an old coffee can and walked off the screen. “Ok. So I get the 'Watch' part. Where'd 'Tower' come from? And why are we watching a dumpster?”
“It's the kitchen entrance to the hotel. Martha and, if everything goes to plan, Lionel will both be using it.”
“Chloe...” he prompted. She jumped a little at her name and he repressed another grin. She sighed.
“That's literal too. We run ops out of a penthouse.”
“In a tower.”
“Yes.”
A memory of her, gagged and tossing down a bow, hit him. “It's the old Teague Tower, isn't it?”
“Teague Tower?”
“The building from last time.”
“The Teagues used to own that place?”
“They did where I come from. Do you know them?”
“One of them,” she said, looking troubled.
“Are there any Teagues on your team?” he asked carefully.
“No! As far as I know they're all dead.”
“Oh.” He wasn't sure how to feel about that. Jason had been a friend of his, once. Of course, Jason may not have even existed in her world. Which brought up the question of who did. He leaned back on an elbow so he could watch her without staring
“So, who's on your team? Is Dinah?”
“Lots of people are on the team,” she said, her guard-walls coming suddenly up again. Not for long, he thought.
“So, 'yes',” he said.
“I didn't say that - “
“You didn't say she wasn't. How 'bout Vic and Andrea? They on the team?”
“Yes,” she said in the kind of drawn-out sigh reserved for those with whom one is trying to be especially patient, like small children and the woman at the deli who wants samples of all the salads. He grinned anyway.
“Who else?”
“A bunch of people you don't know. Is this really relevant?” she asked, frowning at him but without the heat from before.
He shrugged. There was one person in particular he was curious about. He'd been hoping she'd say it and knowing she wouldn't, and now his curiosity was getting the better of his cool. “Is your world's Oliver on your team?”
She bit her lip. That looked like uncertainty, he thought. “I don't think it's a good idea to talk about that,” she said.
Which was another “yes” but unstated for a different reason. “Why not?”
She looked back down at her screen. “Because it's just not. Because you're you and he's him, just like your world is one thing and mine is another.”
“You just told me where your team headquarters were and the identities of three of your teammates.”
She became absorbed in the screen she held, tapping at it until she'd pulled up another camera view, this one over-looking a sidewalk hot-dog stand. He sat up when the customer at the stand turned to walk away and he saw that it was Lois. He walked her stride off the screen, hot-dog in one hand, cellphone in the other, down the sidewalk and out of view. It was another minute before he spoke.
“Do you know Lois?”
She watched the hot-dog vendor help another customer. “She's my cousin,” she said. “In my world she just asked me to be her maid of honor. In your world I died when she was four.” The customer on screen liked a lot of peppers on his dog, Oliver noticed. “I know it's a lot to ask, but I would really appreciate it if you didn't tell her about me. At least, not my name. Call me 'Gazoo' if you have to. I can't ... be involved with people over there and I don't want her to be hurt by that.”
“Sure,” he said dully. “No problem.”
Which wasn't entirely a lie. It had not occurred to him until just now that this was something to be shared with Lois. He did not know what he would tell her if he did. Fortunately, the lock on the sitting room door clicked and he was up and in the other room before it occurred to him that she had, at last, successfully changed the topic of conversation.