deep breaths.

felicity sat on her hands and stared at the screen in front of her, her brows narrowed as she tried to take in the scene. things had happened so quickly, she hadn't had time to initially even process the "heads up" phone call she'd gotten that morning before everything else had begun to fall apart. her phone continued to blow up with all sorts of alerts from apps, but it remained on the other side of the room as she focused on the screen in front of her. actually dealing with people seemed nearly impossible at the moment. she'd been spending time away from her family, looking for her own ways of doing things, but this still struck her particularly hard.

something, or everything, about this felt beyond surreal. her father -- though still in a suit -- was heading into a courthouse, flanked by guards or police or something, with his head ducked low and cameras flashing in his face. she could distantly make out questions being asked, or actually demanded of him, but her brain couldn't process them or the scrolling banner explaining what exactly was happening. all of it was a blur of letters and faces as she shifted her weight from side to side and tried to process what was going on. it had been her father's lawyer on the phone, she supposed, though she hadn't quite caught a name or firm.

by no means was felicity as dumb or clueless as she sometimes let herself be portrayed as being. like most things in her life, it was a role she'd slipped into with ease and she played it up -- it got her the attention she wanted, hell it had gotten her jobs, so she stuck with it. she really didn't mind and people could think she was a moron or a ditz, or some fun-loving and obsessed girl who didn't take life seriously all they wanted. it made things easier for her. but, no, she wasn't dumb.

she knew her father wasn't innocent of a lot of things; she'd picked up on that ages ago. she'd picked up on the way he navigated his -- their -- world, the people he talked to, the things he acquired that always seemed a bit off. she'd noted when he was gone when he came home, and what happened in that period of time. felicity was observant, probably moreso than people gave her credit for being. she could never pinpoint exactly what was going on with her father, or all of the things he was doing, felicity knew something was off and had for some time, so seeing him on television wasn't really a surprise to her, necessarily. felicity spent years studying her father's behaviors and quietly molded herself adter some of them.

if she was being totally honest with herself, more than anything else, she was currently wondering how her father could be so fucking stupid.

maybe it wasn't the fairest of thoughts or way to approach the situation. she was a mix of angry and upset, worried and her mind raced with concern, but it came back to the idiocy of being caught. it was easy to not do that. even with her own ego and arrogance, she was smart enough to never let her ego get in her way....mostly, anyway.

growing up, william had been felicity's hero. his cleverness, his brains, his easy way of getting on with people. felicity had done her best to model herself after her father more than anyone else in her life.

the buzzing of her phone across the room -- and a personalized ringtone, setting it apart from the rest of the barage finally snapped her out of her thoughts and broke her focus, making her close the laptop screen. her thoughts began to race in multiple directions, but she kept coming back to one.

revenge.