DISCLAIMER: Do not own Arrow, nor any of its characters.
Hey, everyone. My first story for Arrow, as well the second fanfiction ever. It had been lying unfinished on my computer since the hiatus after 3x09, and well, now I finally resolved to finish it in one setting. Perhaps the feels of that episode have shifted, but I hope I kept it close to what I had thought of going with it.
A dramatic little piece which can be simply described as 'Oliver Queen is Dead.'
(Pl. mention any grammatical errors. Non-native English speaker, but would love to improve!)
~NJ
John Diggle always knew Felicity Smoak had a backbone of steel, yet he had expected her to fall apart, had prepared himself to pick up the bits of her heart as he nursed his own. But perhaps he underestimated her strength. Or over-estimated her feelings for their friend.
And Roy was on the same page as him as the boy let out a frustrated growl and faced her.
"Blondie, her brother died!" Roy slammed his hands on the med table, the steely bang resounding in the lair, "She is allowed to grieve for a month if that is what she want. It's been barely 4 weeks since his 'rock-climbing accident', for fuck's sake! Thea doesn't need me to come over to help her get over her loss. There is no getting over that loss."
John's eyes flickered to the glass case holding the green suit, as they did whenever Oliver was mentioned. In theory, he knew Felicity was right, the least they could do in Oliver's memory was to watch over his sister who had no one but a psychotic father left in the world - to help Thea get the grief out of her system; but while the IT genius may be done with her mourning in 2 weeks, it's too much to ask the youngest Queen to do so after only a month.
He saw her open her mouth to argue, but cut in before she could. In a voice sharper than he has ever used with her, "Felicity. Don't."
Almost a month ago, Nyssa Al Ghul had sauntered into the lair, and a bloodied sword was placed in the hands of Felicity Smoak, like a stillborn to a hopeful mother.
No one had expected the trembling IT girl to drive the blade through the shoulder of the Demon's Heir, with a cry so anguished, it was barely human.
The assassin had looked her in the eye as she wrenched the cold steel from her shoulder, dark eyes mirroring the blue ones in front of her, her own sorrow swimming in them, "Felicity Smoak, MIT, Class of '09," The Amazon's lips curled into a brittle smile, "I am sorry for your loss."
Clutching a painful shoulder and a broken heart, Nyssa Al Ghul walked away from the occupants of the lair, her avenging footfalls drowned by the silence of devastation.
For weeks Digg watched their little world fell away without its linchpin.
Media made a circus of yet another Queen show. Queen 'Falls' Short of Climbing This Peak!
Laurel became a ball of anger; her days full of harsh justice and nights with harsher boxing lessons.
Roy ran off for 4 days, returning only to destroy half the lair. He refused to don his suit. "It killed him, Digg. What chance do the rest of us have?"
Thea refused to believe that her big brother, who once survived a shipwreck, was dead. I'll know when you get me a body, Mr Diggle, she had told him coldly. But when Oliver did not show up for Christmas, nor for the week after, Thea Queen buried her brother for the second time in the same grave and then holed herself in the flat bought with her brother's (indirect)killer's money.
Little Sara Diggle was never held by her Uncle Oliver. All Lyla Michaels could utter as she held her distraught husband to her chest was, "He always said he'd hold her when she is older. When he wouldn't be afraid to break her."
Barry Allen cursed Oliver Queen for being a "fucking martyr". For not calling for help when it was truly needed. Barry Allen tried staying in Starling City for his grieving friend; he left when she wouldn't talk to him.
It took 8 days for Felicity to talk to any of them. For 8 days, Felicity lived in the Foundry, in Oliver's cot. She only talked to Oliver, till her voice ran out and he had yet (and never) to answer.
On the 9th day, John walked down the metal steps to see the welcome sight of their IT girl once again sitting in front of her monitors. She flinched as he placed a hand on her shoulder, but kept her eyes on the switched-off computers, "He barely began living, Digg." Felicity whispered, a chipped fingernail scratching her mousepad. She didn't say another word that day.
On the 10th day Felicity finally went home. Not before driving past Oliver and Thea's apartment twice. The windows remained dark.
For the next 3 days no one heard anything from Felicity. Nor did anyone really notice. Oliver was gone; there was no time to miss anyone else.
On the 14th day Ray Palmer was relieved to see a blonde ponytail bobbing among the crowd in the lobby as he made his way to the executive elevator. The mysterious Felicity Smoak had returned from yet another 'long story'.
John couldn't explain his irritation with his blonde partner. Which was disturbing because he could always read Felicity, that was his superpower in the team. After the initial shock of Oliver's death was over, he had been planning to take care of his brother's girl. The girl never gave him the chance. It took merely two weeks for her to jump back, to jump right into saving their city.
"Oliver would have wanted this. We need to move on." She had argued. John didn't disagree, but would a little time to themselves - to recuperate - hurt?
For a while he convinced himself and Roy that this was just a coping mechanism. Felicity was in denial, or simply repressing her grief. So they waited for the cracks to appear, for all of it to bubble over and overwhelm her. They humoured her, donned their suits, waiting for the breakdown and making sure they'd be there to catch her before she falls.
It never came. There was no denial - She discussed, sometimes even reminisced Oliver with them, never skirting around the topic, we need to get that suit down, Digg. Leather and mothballs do not go together!. She slipped back into vigilantism as if the Arrow wasn't gone.
Roy's patience broke a month from Oliver's death, when she pushed and pushed him to go see Thea.
Digg's broke a month after that, when she went to dinner with Ray Palmer. This time, it was not a business dinner.
They watched her come down the Foundry stairs, unwinding her scarf. Smiling, she slipped into her chair and switched on her machines.
"How was the date, Blondie?" Roy asked in a neutral tone; Laurel turned her head sharply, sending a questioning look towards Digg. "Date?" she mouthed, he simply shook his head in reply.
"Honestly? Creepy. I mean I should be the last person to judge someone for hacking or tracking, but hey, even I draw a line at dates." She babbled, oblivious to the mood of the others as she talked facing her screens, "I mean, Ray's a great boss! Smart, charming, gives me a lot of offs - as in holidays and unexplained "sick" days, not any other 'offs'; but, yeah, major boundary issues!"
"Sounds like a keeper." Laurel muttered, and Roy for the first time was on the same page as her.
"There was Oliver, who would have dug trenches just to make clear the boundaries!" She let out a little giggle. Roy looked over at John whose fists tightened and expression clouded over. "Ray actually put a tracker into my phone! I am having lacrosse player flashbacks, I swear. Yeah, probably not my type after all. Now I have one night to prepare how to tell my Boss that there'd be no second-"
There was a loud bang as John's fist sent Felicity's fern flying across the Foundry. Before he would say something he'd come to regret, the former Army man stormed out of the lair. Only for you, man, he thought, only because you loved her, Oliver.
The next two months, the atmosphere in the lair was tense, to say the least. They continued the crusade despite their internal tensions. It actually helped, as life seemed to carry on. Roy, sick of the badgering, went to Thea, ensuring the youngest Queen would not lose herself to spiraling down the hell of drugs and booze. His only regret was that she'd never know what a hero her brother was. It was not their secret to tell.
Oliver was gone, but they had his fight to continue. It took four months from the day he was taken away from them, to reach this point of equilibrium. John finally felt like he could breathe.
Until Felicity Smoak disappeared.
Her townhouse and every piece of furniture had been sold, all money from the bank withdrawn. Felicity Smoak's entire life had been cashed out. They ran all of Felicity's searches on Felicity herself for a week. But without an electronic trail of her resources, it was all for nothing.
It took Roy to voice what they all were thinking, "Half the searches are not working on her. There is only one person who can block these computers. It's her, man, it's Felicity herself."
"She never recovered, did she?" It was Laurel who reached the even more surprising conclusion. An upset Detective Lance had informed his daughter about the disappearance of his 'little friend' and since then Laurel had been in the lair every day to aid the search, for reasons she herself couldn't explain. She felt she owed the team, and that the city needed Felicity Smoak. "She waited for you guys to get on with your life and then she... left" She finished, her voice turned husky.
"There is no moving on from such loss." Roy murmured, a faint repetition of what he had once shouted in Felicity's face. The young vigilante sank down in her chair and cradled his head in his hands.
"Felicity Smoak doesn't run." John Diggle said firmly, "She is not a runner"
"Let's not pretend that we ever really understood her." Roy muttered, face still buried, tone dripping with self-loathing.
"It will not be the first time he escaped death. "
"We may have a headless body on our hands but DNA doesn't lie, Johnny. We matched him with both Thea and Tommy's markers. It's Malcolm Merlyn." Lyla stopped at the doors of ARGUS' inner sanctum, swiping her access card and then gesturing her husband and Roy Harper inside. "I doubt he can fool Nyssa Al Ghul into believing the head she took home to her father wasn't him."
The tired agent gestured to one of the screens where a short grainy video of the Demon's Heir was playing on a loop. The deadly assassin was looking straight into the camera, holding the severed head of Merlyn by the hair in one hand, a bleeding sword in the other. Triumph shining clearly.
"God, Thea." Roy sighed. The features of the head, only slightly distorted by the hole in the middle of his forehead, were clearly of the once-Dark Archer. "Yet, I can't wait to spit on his grave."
"Guess you can't run from the League for long." Digg commented, failing to feel empathy for the man's gruesome end.
"It wasn't the League." Both the men turned to Lyla, "The League only came to collect. It was Deadshot. His bullet, curare - his MO. First shot to the torso- missed- and second one straight to the centre of the forehead."
Digg tensed, "Now that Oliver's gone, is Waller having Suicide Squad running loose in Starling?"
"He escaped our facility, Johnny. We have lost control over his bomb implant."
14 months after Oliver died.
10 months after she disappeared.
2 months after Merlyn was put down.
They had their first breakthrough.
They had a partial match through an unauthorized ARGUS facial recognition search. They had found their IT Girl in New Orleans.
The woman on the street below their vantage point was far from the Felicity Smoak either of the man expected to find when they began their stakeout in front of the small building in the rough parts of the strange city. She looked healthier, fit; not gaunt or aggrieved. Gone were the colours though; the only colour this woman wore was a mane of fiery red hair.
Roy got a sick feeling in his stomach as he watched her walk towards the corner of the street. Felicity Smoak walked with little skips or at least with her arms swinging. This woman walked in strides but twitched after every four steps, and her fingers clenched and unclenched as if missing something in their grip.
"Should we..." Roy started, gesturing in the general direction of the woman who was moving farther away with every step she took. He trailed off when he saw her stop and nod at a man sitting in a nondescript car parked across the street.
A man with a very distinctive feature. A very distinctive eye.
"Deadshot" John hissed. Fuck, he should have known. "He never misses, Roy. He killed Merlyn, but I don't think he was the who fired the first shot."
"The missed shot to the torso?" No. God, NO! "It was her? Our Blondie?"
Something made her turn.
She should have known they'd come. Team Arrow doesn't give up on each other. Now looking them in the eye, a caricature of a smile crawled upon her lips; it was ghoulish. It was ugly.
The next second a lorry passed, cutting their line of sight. When it cleared, the woman was long gone.
"The alley next to the bank. Two of them, I think." Laurel spoke into her comm link, "I can handle it. Race you to the Foundry, Red?"
"I am coming over. Wait!"
Three minutes later, Arsenal climbed down from his bike and surveyed the scene before him, his infamous rage mounting. "I told you to wait for me!"
One of the tied-up men tried to trip the Black Canary while she was distracted but was brought down by a nonchalant kick to his shin. "Relax. I had it." She typed out an encrypted message, notifying the SCPD and then went to get on her own bike.
"Yes, you did. Like fucking everyone else has it!" Laurel flinched at the harshness of the tone, as she speeded out. "Roy, man, cool it." Digg told the crimson archer through the comms.
The journey to the Foundry was spent in silence but the youngest vigilante exploded as soon as he stepped off the metal stairs. "Fuck, Laurel, if this 'going off and doing your own thing' is how it's going to be, I am out!"
"It's called making a call, Roy! After all this time you think that I can't even handle two stoned rats?" Her own ire rising, she hissed at him, "But this is not about me, is it? You do not get to take this out on me!"
Before things got ugly, John intervened and had the younger man sit down, while Laurel took the high road and went to the change. The two men sat in silence for a few minutes before John spoke, "That is not how you should be talking to her, kid. She is doing more than what is asked of her."
Roy rubbed his eyes, emotions swinging from rage to frustration to exhaustion, "I just... why am I here when we are not even a team? Everyone goes ahead, makes their own decisions and I am not supposed to give a shit? One ups and dies on us, another is probably off doing things that will get her killed, what next, Digg? What are we even doing here?"
John Diggle sighed, feeling as if he had aged two decades in these past two years. "You got to let the anger go, Roy."
"She left. She packed up and left, and then she kills Merlyn. No thought of us, or Thea."
"And Thea got over that death pretty quickly. I wish Felicity wasn't involved but Merlyn deserved what he got"
"It's been a year since New Orleans and we are yet to hear a word from her. She abandoned the crusade, Digg. And the team."
"Yes, and yet here you are." Laurel interjected, shutting the bathroom door behind her, a towel wrapped around her wet hair. "Still catching criminals; not lost and devastated like you were two years ago."
John remained silent as Roy let out a mocking scoff. Laurel rolled her eyes.
"She forced herself to get over the death of the man she loved; pushed and pushed you both to continue with his crusade; made you -" She pointed at Roy, "- make sure his sister isn't discovered overdosed on heroin one day. Yes, you hated her a bit then, but she had to stay till she was sure his team - her team - would keep on going."
Tossing the towel in the laundry bin she had insisted on being installed in the Foundry, Laurel took a perch beside the monitors, "All I see a woman who suddenly disappeared and then is found putting bullets in the man who got her loved one killed. Don't tell me, John, you don't recognize this."
He broke his silence, "Look, Laurel, we understand all of that. Hell, we probably should have understood all that before she left; but you are right, you do not know Felicity." His voice soft to soften the barb, "She is a team player and she is not a killer." John said, his gaze moving to Roy who was uncharacteristically quiet beside him, "We dropped the ball when he died, lost our minds for a bit, but he was our friend too. Oliver was my brother. It should be us fighting beside her, not a Suicide Squad fugitive."
"Why she left without you? Perhaps it's a hell she did not want to drag you guys into, did you think about that? I may not understand Felicity, but I do know Oliver -" Laurel took a shaky breath, "-knew Oliver, and he would have done the same. Or maybe even worse. You guys would have forgiven him." She stared straight at Roy, "Eventually."
The younger man held on to the flimsiest thread of anger, staring at her with defiance.
"Forgive her, Red. That kind of grief, it leaves you in pieces - pieces that do not add up to a even a half - at least Felicity had more sense than becoming an alcoholic." Laurel gave a self-deprecating smile,
"Yeah, she decided murder gave a better high than Merlot." Roy put in a Felicity-esque cent, which finally got John to crack a smile.
Laurel shook her head, wondering when she became the voice of reason,"Leaving was a dick move on her part; but she was internalizing Oliver. And he always was a dick when it came to protecting those he loved."
"When were you going to tell us, Amanda?" Digg snarled.
Waller ignored the man and zeroed in on Lyla, who stared right back. With a smirk on her crimson lips she turned back to John. "Well, since you have a personal interest in the mission, I suppose we can use all the help we can get." Her tone, however, clearly showed it wasn't a request. "Your unique skill sets may come in handy against the League." Her smile shifted to Roy, fully suited with his bow in hand, and Digg had to give props to the young man for not flinching even the slightest.
"We will fight with you but first you tell us where she is." Laurel argued.
"No" Waller replied, "You can meet her when the League is neutralized."
"We can do this the easy way, Amanda, or we can go try this our own way. I am sure ARGUS won't mind a few loose variables."
"I am only complying with Ms Smoak's wishes, John." Her voice sugary sweet, yet moulded in steel, "It was me, to whom she came with her proposition and findings, not you. Do not mistake that I need you and your little team; it will just be interesting to see how well Oliver Queen's group of misfits will fair against the man who drove a sword through him." Her words turned sharp in a second, "It is my prerogative what I wish to share with you."
"And you do have a lot of that, don't you? You have been keeping an eye on her all along, haven't you?" Digg seethed. "You kept track of her so that she could provide you with their location and a perfect plan to bring down the Ra's and the League."
"Spot on, John" Waller replied dryly and walked away.
"She knew Blondie's location all along?" Roy asked.
"It was the account Deadshot uses to send money from his assassination gigs to his daughter. There have been transfers to it six times in past 20 months with no actual assassinations besides Merlyn; Felicity's been paying Deadshot from her liquefied funds. Amanda somehow managed to track the source despite how well Felicity hid it." Lyla explained, "The preparation to storm Nanda Parbat has been going on for a month now; Waller had me stonewalled till now."
"The whole League?" Laurel asked hollowly, wondering how many lost souls like her dead sister inhabited the belly of that mountain.
Lyla sighed, leaning towards her husband as he rubbed her arm, "Felicity wants Ra's. Amanda, the entire League. You can guess who won that argument."
"She is going to try take on Ra's Al Ghul herself, isn't she?" Roy asked, not really expecting an answer. "We let her do that, Digg, then we'd be burying her too. Just like Oliver."
"That is, if any of us makes it out alive." Laurel said, her tone teasing in a desperate bid to calm her nerves before going off to war.
The pilot's command that they are landing the ARGUS aircraft cut off whatever John had to say.
Stepping out into the icy temperatures of Tibet's highest region, the members of Starling City's vigilante team looked at the infinite landscape, somewhere within the majestic mountains lay the legendary city of Nanda Parbat. In one of the tunnels beneath the same city, waiting for an ARGUS contingent was one Felicity Smoak.
The maze of tunnels finally opened to a vast domed chamber, the final obstacle between the Demon's Head and them. John was exhausted and wounded, but miraculously alive, though he couldn't say the same for the 21-strong contingent they started with. Team Arrow and Lyla had kept close as they battled assassin after assassin, losing agents after agents, till only them and five of Amanda's men were left.
He hardened his heart as a barely 16-year-old was shot down just as Laurel dodged a blade thrown by the boy. The only reason they were winning (if you called it winning) was because it was an ambush. It would have never been a fair fight with a prepared League. What the drones had not destroyed, the legions of agents armed to their teeth did.
Ra's Al Ghul made war a religion; Amanda Waller believed only in victories.
"Do you see her?" Roy yelled to him, and John squinted through the blood that was flowing from a cut above his right eye. The contingents were supposed to finally merge in the this hall, one short tunnel away from the Demon's personal quarters, where Ra's waited like the dramatic dog he is, while the remaining few of League's best were battling to save his royal ass.
A flash of red drew his eye to the tunnel mouth two tunnels over. Felicity. "Arsenal!"He called out and both Laurel and Roy turned in the direction he was pointing, before whipping back to the assassins that fortified the antechamber. The impenetrable circle of the League's finest cut down agent after agent, in a mockery of Amanda's brute force.
John Diggle was never more aware of the League's glory as he was at that moment, with a fearsome Nyssa Al Ghul standing in their paths, her form a mosaic of blood of her foes, the lone Amazon who blocked their way. Dodging bullets, it seemed she was deliberately refraining from attacking, giving him chance to keep an eye on Felicity.
"What you have done, is unforgivable." The daughter of the Demon snarled at them as she flung Laurel aside, "You come to our home, you kill our children. You do not deserve the ignorance I have allowed you!" They lost another agent who foolishly charged at her, firing till he ran out of ammo.
Withdrawing the crimson blade from its unfortunate victim, she looked him in the eye and roared, "AL SAHEEM!"
A black assassin landed next to her, seemingly appearing from nowhere. He had leather and a pretty black tunic. He had hood and a mask. The bow was same, but the arrows were black. His face was same, but the soul staring back at them was black.
When Fee had commented that he could smack irony in the face by being an assassin who ambushed the Mecca of assassins, he had laughed out loud, something Floyd Lawton rarely did. But then she rarely made funny comments, and even rarer was to see a smile carve her dimples. So he had decided to come along, just as he decided to continue helping her when their arrangement was over. Because he loved to see Fee smile.
He now looked at his little duckling, the once terrified but determined eyes hidden behind thick lenses now trained on each target before lodging bullets perfectly. He liked to call their team-up destiny, but she had called him out on the brief moment of whimsy, citing just exactly why she chose his tutelage, no matter how fast the Demon's sword is, a bullet is still faster. I don't play by rules in battles I can't win.
He watched as she fired the modified weapons, twisting around the arrows - the only weapons that could touch them. They stood in a wide circle, the eye of the hurricane in a sea of assassins, a calm zone where no warrior entered with breath still in their body.
He was so proud of her. His Fee. Oliver Queen's Felicity.
He likes to tell himself on some of his dark days that she has been his for these two years, and so he would murmur words of love in empty air, willing them to reach the heart that was buried with Queen somewhere in the bowels of this earth.
He likened himself to an artist (she would laugh!) or perhaps even a poet (oh, yes, she would laugh!). She was his muse and so he secretly churned verse upon verse - of another life where it'd be Fee whom he'd come back to from war. Who'd call him "hero-ish" as she did when he would sit on the floor beside her cot, talking her to sleep whenever her insomnia got worse. Not to a scared wife and not to a wary daughter. Or maybe a daughter, with Fee's eyes.
But the verses were lost in the clangs of swords. For the first time, bullets were too loud. "If I don't make it, tell my girl her Daddy loved her?" He had told her earlier, and that I loved you too. She didn't believe he could die, his ever-optimistic girl. But he was an old hand at Suicide Missions now, and this once Amanda Waller wouldn't be the mistress of his trigger.
As two unavoidable projectiles whistled towards her, he stepping in front and shot his last. He hoped Fee would find irony in the fact that it was an arrow that his bullet lost to, especially with all her speeches about modern weaponry.
Roy saw red. Which coming from him sounded like a pathetic pun, but no other words can describe anger he felt at the fucked-up fuckery that his life had become.
"You, son-of-a-bitch!" He hissed, as the very alive Oliver Queen looked at him impassively. "You sure are a piece of work, aren't you, Oliver?"
The black archer surveyed the battered battalion that was the rest of Team Arrow, minus the blonde one. "Oliver Queen is dead. Leave our city!"
"Oh, now this is your city, Ollie?" Laurel asked sourly, aghast that he pulled the I-Am-Alive stunt again,"What is wrong with you?!"
Suddenly the sword was drawn from its sheath, gleaming, as Nyssa stared at them shrewdly, before she turned away to fight the contingent headed by Waller herself, leaving them at his mercy. "My name is Al Saheem, and you will leave!"
"You lost the right to ask us to do anything. You lost it the day you decided it's better to let us fall apart with your death than to own up with whatever shitty stuff you've been up to since then, Oliver." John came forward, even as Lyla tried to push him back. "Look, man, I won't fight a brother, get out of the way so that we could get-"
Lyla pushed him down as Al Saheem swung his weapon, missing John by a hair's breadth. Roy took this opportunity to engage him, shooting arrow after arrow at his former teacher, brother and sometimes father. Laurel swung her batons, but even with the two of them, they could barely keep up to create enough distraction for John to grab Felicity.
"You have no idea what you have done!" Laurel screamed at him even as she panted with effort to dodge the deadly blade. "Once an asshole, always an asshole." She laughed bitterly between her pants.
"Were you trying to save one of us again?" Roy taunted, "Do you like the result, Oliver? Now that all of us will probably die!?"
The sword suddenly clanged to the floor, the crisp tang audible even with the background of chaos. It sounded like a death knell. The bow replaced as a weapon, and Roy felt a painful pang looking at the man and his weapon that was once his hero of true justice. The pang was followed with a much real pain as an arrow pierced his thigh, "I. AM. NOT. OLIVER. QUEEN!" The assassin screamed in rage, knocking another arrow, pointing it at the Canary.
It happened so quickly Al Saheem would have missed it if he wasn't looking, the glance that she threw to his left. Without sparing the woman another thought he followed her gaze and saw John Diggle twenty paces away. But it wasn't Diggle that caught his interest.
It was the barest glimpse of the flame-haired woman finding a break in their defenses and slipping through it.
Defending a wounded Roy from another attacker as best as she could, Laurel watched helplessly as Oliver Queen set his sights on his new target and disappeared in a flash.
John Diggle had never told the 'when you are in war, you go a bit numb; it all becomes a bit hazy' story because war to him meant almost overwhelming feelings. So much colour, so much red.
So he was surprised how his vision tunneled. Oliver was a danger. Felicity was IN danger. Get to her.
Only the damn girl put his own marksmanship to shame and slipped in a blink. He followed the fire atop her head. Rushing, somehow, somehow, he burst his way through the wall of assassins by sheer will. He slipped into the entry tunnel leading to the heart of Nanda Parbat, only to see the tail ends of a very distinctive black tunic disappearing around the corner.
The patter of steady volley of bullets like that of a machine gun was almost soft with the noise outside.
"FELICITY!"
He was too late.
It was so tragic that she wanted to laugh, and then cry. This man, this pathetic excuse of a man, who made a game out of their lives. Who made them living marionettes to his code of honour, his whims, watching them dance to Ra's Al Ghul's personal tunes till he tired of one and snipped its strings.
And here he had been, sitting on his divan, like a prize at the end of a tournament. Waiting for whoever who got through his toy soldiers, so he could engage them in games of his own. Twist and tangle their strings till they are so caught up in his web that they end up choking themselves.
But Felicity Smoak was smarter than that. There were no accusations made, no defense heard. She was the Demon's executioner, not his jury or his judge.
It was over in a blink and she was rather proud of it. It was beautiful to her soul. Oliver wouldn't be proud of her methods, but he didn't always approve of everything she did.
Ra's, even as he lay half propped up on his dramatic furniture, managed to give her a superior look. All four limbs mangled beyond recognition. These bullets were her own invention, slightly borrowed from Oliver's exploding arrows. She was rather proud of them too.
It fit; she cut Ra's strings.
Raising her arm, not even having spoken a word to the man who upended her world, she aimed her weapon at the centre of his head. She was almost tempted to make a ceremony of the kill-shot.
Al Saheem's blood roared with rage. A slip of a woman! A slip of a woman broke their defense, HIS planned defenses. As he skidded into the Demon's - his master's - chambers, the sight that greeted him would have given him a momentary shock, if not his ruthlessly ingrained instincts and reflexes.
The fire-haired woman, her proud leather-clad back, stood above the mutilated half-dead Ra's Al Ghul. An unfamiliar relief coursed through him, but he shut the thought down and notched an arrow.
If there were ways to fragment a tale to the very milliseconds, this was how things went-
The woman aimed for the kill shot, just as an arrow pierced through the arm which had the gun.
A name was screamed near the doorway, jarring Al Saheem's thoughts, giving him the slightest pause.
Enough for the woman, confidently ambidextrous, to toss her weapon into her other hand and pull the trigger. Multiple times.
Al Saheem notched and shot. Multiple times.
Felicity liked to think that those last three bullets exploded the Demon's Head's Head, saying Die! Die! Die!
She had heard Digg coming for her. Digg always came for her. It was good he came for her. Because it hurt.
An arrow pierced her, going through and sticking out from the right of her chest. Another embedded itself in her spine and down she went on her side. It hurt.
"Digg. It hurts."
Suddenly those arms (like bowling balls!) propped her up, and clutched her against a warm chest. Her name like a chant on her friend's lips. God, she missed him.
It's only when Digg pushed her back to ask what all hurts does she see him.
Al Saheem stared at her face.
"Oliver?" The faint sound from the woman reached his ears. Those familiar features. This slip of a woman. His slip of a woman.
Oliver Queen stared at her face.
"Digg, look, Oliver's here. Hi!" She looked at him (how could she even look at him?), and smiled. Her eyes bright; his Felicity's big bright eyes.
That exact moment his heart broke and his feet lurched forward. Not even Diggle's hateful glare, softened by the river of tears that escaped down his cheeks, could stop him from reaching her. There was a commotion at the door, but Oliver was oblivious to the final reunion of Team Arrow happening in this very room as the rest rushed in. The background sounds had ceased. The Battle of Nanda Parbat was over, but he was destroyed either way.
"Felicity." He whispered to her, hair's breadth away, too scared to touch what he had already destroyed. Digg folded her into himself, as much as the arrows (his arrows) sticking out of her would allow, to protect her from the monster he was.
He had always feared he would get her killed. Never that he'd kill her himself.
"You shot me." Felicity said, her smile trembling, as if trying to make a joke. Only it was followed by a gurgle which finally made him crumble at her feet. "I can't believe you shot me!" She reiterated, now a little incredulous.
Tears came, and Roy shoved him away from her. But that upset her (confused her as if she couldn't see that what he did was unthinkable and unforgivable, as if he hadn't shot her with an intent to kill). So they allowed him to wrap himself against her knees, like a desperate devotee at his God's shrine.
"I am so sorry, so sorry." He rubbed his face against her, begging, kissing what skin he could touch, "Don't. Don't go. Don't leave me. I am so sorry!"
"Hey, I am here." She murmured, voice weak, and ran her good hand on his head, but his sobs became even more desperate when he looked at her. "And you are here. Alive." Her teeth had turned crimson with blood, and a tiny rivulet ran down the corner of her mouth. She closed her eyes, as if tired.
"Felicity." He didn't know how many times he called her. Roy cursed him with the foulest of names, clutching her injured hand to his chest. As Laurel and Lyla sank into a corner, silent in their sorrow. But he didn't stop, even when Diggle told him to let her go. How could he? Could he possibly?
"Felicity, I love you, love you so much." He said to her stomach, "Stay, Felicity, please stay with me."
"Oliver?" It was so faint anyone barely heard. He did. And when she weakly reached out, John finally let her go into his arms. "Oliver?"
"Yes, I am here" He kissed every inch of her face, his own lips now red with her blood as more rivulets flowed down her mouth. "I am here, I am here, I'll never go again! Felicity?"
"Oliver?" She whispered, and he sobbed into her neck; with dying strength she pleaded, "I don't want to die."
He choked on his sobs. Pain bloomed in his chest, worse than any torture he has been through.
"Let her go, Oliver!" John snarled.
He wouldn't. He couldn't. "Felicity?"
But Felicity Smoak was yet (and never) to reply.
-Fin-