Look who's back! Thank you guys so much for the amazing response to In The End. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I really meant to have this little thing her eup before Three Ghosts aired, and it was on AO3, but I didn't get the chance to post it here till just now.
So, typical rules apply. Read, review if you wish, and enjoy!
This was a bad idea. A horribly, terribly bad idea.
In fact, Diggle would even go so far as to say that this was one of the worst ideas he's ever heard. And that's saying something, considering he's friends with Oliver Queen, the man who thinks a good idea is faking his own kidnapping at the hands of the 'Vigilante' to get information out of his mother.
No, this idea was definitely worse that that. Somewhere in the range of one to two hundred times worse, if Diggle had to guess. Because this idea not only involves trusting someone who's already been caught lying to them once with their secret, but it includes kidnapping him to get him to help.
But Felicity is panicking, going on and on about how she's a computer genius, not a scientist, and she knows close to zero about chemistry, so she can't even begin to identify the serum Oliver was injected with. She's convinced that Oliver is going to die, and that Barry Allen is the only person they can trust to save him.
Diggle is trying to keep a level head, telling himself that because they don't know what was in the syringe, for all they knew Oliver could be fine in a few hours. But goddamn it all if watching Felicity work herself into a tizzy doesn't pull at every heartstring he has. That, and when have anything concerning Oliver and unknown substances ever worked out okay?
It's on those grounds that Diggle agrees to their horribly thought out bad idea, because they don't have the luxury of time to come up with a good one, or even a semi decent one. He dons the extra hood, and Felicity arms him with a mild sedative in the form of a dart he can shoot from a distance. He jokes about wondering what happened to the good old fashioned days of dark vans/ bags over the head in a dark alley kidnappings, but judging by the glare he receives, Felicity doesn't appreciate the humor.
Diggle gets to the train station just as the last train to Central City is leaving, and he's afraid that Barry might've actually caught it. If they don't have the time to come up with a better idea, they really don't have the time to travel to Central City to hunt him down. But ten minutes later, Barry comes rushing in just as the last employee is leaving, and he almost feels bad for him, because he just knows that the kid is going to get hell from his boss when he finally makes it back. A tiny part in the back of his head wonders if maybe, if Barry can actually do what Felicity claims he can and Oliver is no longer in danger of dying in the immediate future, he can convince Oliver to give him a job at Queen Consolidated. But of course, the saving comes first. They can't give him a job if the CEO is dead.
Diggle waits until he sees Barry sit down before he takes aim and lets the dart fly, watching as it sticks true in the side of his neck. Felicity told him it was a fast acting sedative, so it probably wouldn't make him any friends if Barry smashed his head on the ground when he fell. The fact that Barry passes out almost instantly tells him he made the right decision.
Diggle climbs off of his perch and sneaks into the now darkened building, thanking whichever higher power is responsible for the station being empty. The last thing he wants to do it try to explain his way out of a grown man in green leather drugging and kidnapping a kid. Or more likely, punch his way out of a situation.
By the time he makes it back to the hideout, Felicity looks about a step away from a complete mental breakdown. Oliver's condition had worsened, and he was fading more by the second. Felicity explained quickly that the longer he took, the more worried she became that he wouldn't get back in time, and the more panicked she got, and the more she panics, the more she rambles, kind of like she's doing right now, and she's going to shut up now.
During the time they had to wait for Barry to wake up, Felicity keeps checking Oliver's vitals every few seconds, making small noises of distress every time something changes, which increases in frequency as time wears on. Diggle would've told her to stop if it weren't for the fact that he was doing the exact same thing, just not as obviously. He couldn't help but wonder out loud why their incredibly bad idea included sedating the person they needed to help them. Felicity claims that it was so that he wouldn't find out the location of the hideout, but Diggle points out that there were other ways to do that that didn't involve wasting time waiting for Barry to wake up (and here they came back to the dark hoods and creepy vans). He can see Felicity deflate, knowing she wasted unnecessary amounts of what little time they had.
Diggle felt bad for the girl. There were some days that he felt like the only one that could see just how much Oliver and Felicity cared for each other. But then when events like this happen, the days that Oliver does something stupid and get himself hurt, and Felicity does whatever she can, weather it be in her skill set or not, to make sure he's always okay, he can see just how little of a chance someone like Barry Allen has of coming between the two.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, and Oliver gradually getting worse, Barry starts to stir. Both end their vigil over Oliver and turn to watch as Barry takes in his surroundings. Diggle can tell by the wondrous expression as he takes in the hideout, the hood, the arrows and extra bow, that Barry will help them. He knows this even before his gave lands on Oliver, lying prone on the table and still dressed in his hood.
They give him the half a second it takes for all the clues to fall into place before Felicity steps in from of him and says 'Please help my friend.'
Ta Da! So I have to ask, who loves Barry? I do quite a lot, but it really helps that I fell in love with Grant Gustin when he was Sebastian on Glee (There's just something about a singing bad boy in a tie and blazer. Go look up him doing Smooth Criminal on Glee if you want a reference) Finding out he was cast as The Flash on Arrow made me freak out just a bit... and by a bit I mean A Lot.
Anyway, to repeat, please review. I'm open to all kinds, criticism included, so long as your nice about it.
Thanks for reading!
CadetEyes