'It can't end like this…not like this!' The thought echoed inside Oliver Queen's mind as he started to crawl on his belly towards her. The ground was covered by debris from the fight. Oliver's latest unsuccessful battle against the man that had once been his best friend, a man he had thought of as a brother. Pain lanced though his entire body but his gaze was fixed on his goal, he had to reach her.
"Look at you! This is what you've been reduced to…what I'VE reduced to you! Crawling on the floor like a WORM!" His adversary's accent was all too familiar to Oliver's ears. "Where do you think you're going, huh? You think you can somehow save her if you can get close enough, is that it?" He jeered. "You took your best shot and YOU FAILED!"
With this Slade Wilson, garbed in this black Deathstroke gear, reached down with his right hand and picked up the flat grey finished Desert Eagle handgun from off the floor leading to what had been Felicity Smoak's desk at Queen Consolidated. Slade ejected the magazine and inspected the rounds. "I would have never thought you had it in you, .50 cal depleted uranium hollow point tipped rounds, must have cost a fortune to make. If you'd hit me in the head, as you intended, I would probably be dead right now. Not even I could have survived that. Lucky for me I improved my gear after our last fight on the island." Slade sneered as he slammed the mag back into the pistol.
Oliver's plan had almost worked, Slade was disgusted with himself. If he had been a fraction slower, or if he hadn't spent the money on his upgrades he'd be dead. He looked at his discarded, now ruined, bifurcated black and orange mask on the floor and realized that it more than anything else had saved his life. Without it Oliver would have beaten him, again. He had underestimated Oliver once more and it almost cost him. But as disgusted as he was with himself it was nothing to what he felt towards Oliver. The idea that some people of this city had considered this maggot on the floor a hero filled him with contempt. And the idea that Oliver was still crawling, still trying to reach her was both pathetic and laughable. But Slade was getting annoyed at his persistence.
Oliver realized he was beaten. He could feel, more that see, Slade moving around him. There were so many ways "Deathstroke" could end it. More ways than Oliver could count in his pain hazed mind. He had no rational hope for victory but he had to reach her. She had to know that he hadn't given up. That with his last breath, with his last heartbeat he had been going towards her. That she was his final thought.
Felicity Smoak couldn't believe what her eyes were seeing, didn't want to believe what her eyes were seeing. Oliver in his Arrow gear, beaten half to death by a maniac, squirming his way towards her. She could tell that he kept trying to look her in the eyes but he couldn't quite get his head high enough to do it. Tears kept streaming down her face as she continued to try and call out to him but her gag prevented anything intelligible from coming out. Wilson had tied her wrists together with zip cuffs and secured them off to her left with a spike. Her arms were level to her head and she felt sure that she could free them from the wall if she just pulled hard enough. Oliver had to know that she hadn't given up, that her last thought had been of trying to reach him.
Slade had had enough. He wanted the REAL fun to begin. "Oh no my old friend, you don't get to reach your true love. That's not part of the plan." Hate and joy filled what was left of his soul. With that he looked around to the green walls of what had been the entry to Oliver's office. 'Yes' he thought, 'that will do nicely.' Slade crushed the Eagle in his gloved fist and let the ruined weapon fall to the floor. Then he began to slam his right fist into the concrete wall. The loud crashes and debris radiated out from the impacts. Any normal man would have just shattered his hand, but Slade hadn't been ordinary since he had been injected with the WWII Japanese super solider serum over 5 years ago.
Oliver had no idea why Slade was putting fist sized holes into the wall and he didn't care. It gave him more time. Time to reach Felicity. Finally Slade grunted in success and he ripped out from the wall of piece of steel rebar. Felicity was shocked that he could perform such a feat. He was a superman. What would it take to kill something like him. She prayed that something could stop him and save Oliver. But she knew it was hopeless.
Slade turned back towards Oliver. He was impressed, the Kid had managed to move almost a whole 6 inches towards the blonde. Slade looked at his prize from the wall. It didn't look quite right for what he had in mind and he knocked off the remaining bits of concrete. Once finished he walked up to him, picked his spot and drove the steel rebar into Oliver's right lung, pining him to the floor. 'Like the bug that he is' thought Slade.
Felicity's heart lurched when she heard Oliver scream in agony. The sound filled her ears and killed part of her soul. This was it. This was the end. She saw Slade begin to move towards her. She knew what was coming. She was finally grateful for the gag, this way Oliver wouldn't be able to hear her scream. But she would be strong for as long as she could. She lifted her gaze from the love of her life, pinned to the floor by a steel rod nearly 3 feet long and focused her gaze on the man walking towards her. She wasn't stupid. She was going to die, horribly, but she would accept her end. She wouldn't tremble with fear. She would look the homicidal manic in his eye and show him that he hadn't conquered her spirit.
"I have to say one thing for you Kid, you certainly have a type. What's with you and blondes anyway?" His mouth formed a smirk, "I have to admit", he pointed to Felicity secured to the wall, "she surprised me. When I came to town I thought certain you would have hooked up with your long lost love Laurel." The mocking tone of his voice made it clear about how he felt. "Then when Sara came back and you and her started banging like bunnies I thought, see, this is just like him, can never decide. But then I saw the way you looked at this one and I knew, I just knew." Slade voice took on a softer quality. "When you didn't think she noticed, you looked at Shado like that."
Slade was now within arms reach of Felicity. She clenched her jaw and glared at him with all the hate and defiance she could muster. She saw out of her peripheral vision that he pulled a long knife, more like a machete, from a scabbard from his left hip. He was about to begin. "I know you think I'm the bad guy here Ms. Smoak but you just don't understand, I'm doing you a kindness. Oliver is scum. He would have betrayed you eventually. Just as he has everyone else in his life. Especially the women, isn't that right Kid!?" Slade jerked his head back towards Oliver as if to get his attention.
It had been the first time since the fight that he had addressed her and Felicity felt nothing but contempt for this little "man". He was trying to break her. Make her doubt Oliver. She would have sooner doubted herself. Oliver was far from perfect but he was great man and nothing this piece of filth could ever say would change how she felt about him.
Oliver was barely alive now. He had felt his right lung collapse when it had been pierced by the steel rod. He was beaten, bleeding and now he couldn't get enough oxygen. Each breath was a struggle. He wouldn't last much longer. But Slade had made a mistake, perhaps his last if Oliver could just take advantage of it. He remembered his teachings, from both Slade and Shado on the island.
Pain, they had told him, was just an electrical impulse to the brain. And thus, like anything else it could be managed, controlled. Just as he had been taught, he focused past the pain, past the hurts from his body. 'The will controls the body' said the real Slade's voice in Oliver's mind. He just had to focus past the pain and focus on the goal, the now and he could still save her. With what little strength remained in his body Oliver clenched his jaw and focused on his goal, his now: Felicity, more than he had anything in his entire life and then he put his hands down near his chest and pushed up. More pain than he had ever experienced flooded through his body. He almost passed out, almost cried out in pain but slowly he continued. Even has he felt the rebar tear his flesh he kept going.
Felicity saw what Oliver was up to and some small part of her heart leaped. She couldn't even begin to understand how Oliver was doing what he was doing. She didn't understand what he hoped to accomplish but she believed in him. To the end.
Finally Oliver did it, he pushed himself free of the steel rod that had pinned him to the floor but it would all be for nothing if he couldn't reach the syringe. He castigated himself. He should have used it sooner, he had felt sure that if his first plan had failed he still would have been able to inject himself but everything had gone bad so fast he hadn't had time. But Slade turning his back and gloating had given him the precious minutes he needed. The pain of being pinned to the floor had bought enough clarity that he had seen the syringe off to the right. He hadn't even realized that Slade hadn't found it. With his body racked with agony Oliver made his way to his last desperate hope. He had to be both quick and quiet, if Slade realized what was going on Felicity was dead and he could not let that happen.
When he reached the object he almost couldn't believe it, it was intact. When Oliver had first recognized that mirakuru had made it's way to Starling City he knew he had to plan for worst case scenarios and unlike his time on the island he had a multibillion dollar corporation to work on final, fallback solutions. When he had approached Henry Fyff in Applied Sciences with Roy's blood sample he had asked for two options: the best case would be a cure, some way to reverse the effects of the mirakuru serum, the worst case was an improved version. One that would be limited in some aspects but more potent in others. Fyff had failed at the first but Oliver held in his hand the results of the second. Praying to a God he no longer was sure he believed in, praying that it would work, Oliver stabbed himself in the heart and activated the syringe.
Felicity wasn't sure what Oliver was doing. He seemed to be making his way towards something. Some object on the ground. She couldn't make out what it was and she couldn't focus her eyes toward it, she couldn't give away to Slade what Oliver was doing.
"I'm going to kill her slow Kid. Won't take off the gag first. Don't want her trying to profess her love or some crap like that. But later, when she's lost to the pain, when she'll say anything for it to stop, then I'll take it off. So you can hear her scream!" Slade shook with both rage and pleasure. He was finally going to get what he wanted. The scream that Slade heard was beyond anything he had ever heard in his life. For a brief moment he was shocked. The gag was still in place in the girl's mouth and Oliver had never screamed like that, even after all the things Slade had done to him. It was those few brief seconds of indecision that were key.
Oliver had thought he had known pain before, he had been wrong. Compared to Henry's improved mirakuru serum what he had felt before was nothing. A match compared to an inferno. Oliver could literally feel his body change, altering and remaking itself. But unlike the effects of the older version Oliver's mind was still his own or as much as it could be engulfed in agony. 'A small price to pay' he though, although not in so many words, 'a small price to pay.'
The noise of Oliver's scream threatened to rip Felicity's hold on reality. She realized now what he had done. He had injected himself with mirakuru. She didn't know how he had gotten it but somehow he must have brought it with him. And she knew with a finality to the core of her being that Oliver had sacrificed his humanity to save her.
Oliver snapped around to face the man that had taken his friend's place. His vision seemed tinted in red. Both rage and hope filled his heart. He wouldn't fail. He would save her. He would end the threat to her forever. Slade turned to face his reborn enemy, who yelled with rage now, not pain. 'The Kid must have actually improved the serum' he thought incredulously. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He'd found the keystone, the blonde. He would kill her in front of Oliver and thus destroy him. That was the plan, that's how it was supposed to end. But as he looked into the Oliver's eyes he felt something he hadn't felt in a long, long time…fear. With a guttural yell Oliver launched himself at Deathstroke with all the speed and power his new body could give him. In a blink of an eye he lowered his shoulder and hammered into his enemy and kept on going. He was going to save her and there was only one way he could be sure.
Time seemed to slow down for Felicity. The terror she felt now was more than she had ever felt in her life. She had known, in her head what Oliver was going to do, but the reality of it was almost too much for her heart to bear. But she couldn't stop looking as Oliver crashed into the maniac that had caused so much pain, all in the name of a woman that never loved him. She couldn't stop looking as Oliver pushed Slade to the windows, couldn't stop looking as they both crashed through the windows and out of the building. Felicity thought, at that very moment her heart stopped beating. He was gone from her sight. He was gone.
Quickly recovering she turned to face her pinned hands. She placed her feet against the wall and in a three point position she pushed with her legs and pulled her arms with more strength than she thought possible. She had to see. With a grunt and a crash she freed herself from the wall and landed on the floor. Felicity didn't bother to try and cut the zip cuffs, she just ran to the window where Oliver had left from. She barely slowed as she reached the edge and looked down, her fear of heights completely lost in her all consuming fear for Oliver. What she saw as she looked down made her blood run cold. There they were, they had crashed onto the roof of a car. She could see what had been Slade's face, what was left of it, looking up unblinking into the sun. Oliver had landed on top of him, all she saw was the back of his green Arrow gear. He wasn't moving. 'Not like this" she thought 'it can't end like this!'