Hello all! So...yes, I know I am very much behind on updating Officer & Hygenist, but I am working on it..this chapter has been giving me troubles tho so. Uhm. This kind of popped out in the mean time? I first gotnthis idea some time ago when I heard peoples discussing how buzzards were known for sometimes going after some livestock and (occasionally) small children. Somehow, my mind immediately jumped to this. Uh, I may need help? Lol. But then, I forgot about it for a while, recently remembered, and so here we go.

Slightly crack fic? You decide. I do feel crazy having written this. But I wanted to. I may add another chapter in the future, about nightmares, but for now it is complete.

Oh, a small note of warning: If bird attacks make you anxious or might be nightmare fodder, feel free to skip the text between the second and third line breaks, as that has the worst of the attacks. I don't go into ny graphic detail, but thought I'd mention it.

Birds.

Such as innocent word. A word that usually brings to mind those cute little, colorful creatures of song that perched outside one's window in the mornings or late afternoon. Creatures of hope, who filled the air with life and sounds after the destruction and darkness of the storm was past. Something to make you smile, a pleasant note to any day.

Not these birds, though.

These birds were more like feather-winged agents of evil, sent to kill and destroy. She bet their eyes glowed red, too - or maybe that would just be in her nightmares...

The mission had started out routine enough - an out of town gang boss was looking to make Starling his new hotbed for criminal activities. They'd come to his home town several hours away to shut him down at the roots. Diggle and mostly Felicity hadn't exactly been onboard with this, considering after several days of recon they surmised that his base of operations was, literally, in the middle of nowhere. But after Oliver pointed out that this would minimize casualties, they were on their way.

Felicity stayed behind in the van to monitor things, Diggle with her but on the ready to jump out in case Oliver needed him. They parked the van behind a cluster of trees about half a mile away. The mission was going great - until everything went horribly wrong.

Oliver was made, and in the fall out he lost his comm unit and for some reason his tracker went offline, too. With no way to know where he was or what was going on, Digg jumped out to assist. Only, apparently going the wrong way seeing as Oliver had limped up to the van not even two minutes later. After she assisted in pulling him through the door, Digg told them via his comm that he was fine, but it would take too long to get back to the van so go on without him, he'd meet up later. So, after making sure Oliver was secure, Felicity took to the driver's seat.

Then hit a deer. With the van. A huge, buffalo-like deer. I mean seriously - it was so large it wrecked the van, but then got up, shook itself off, and sauntered away.

Really, it was. The deer was totally mocking her.

At this point, basically life in general was mocking her. Oliver insisted that she leave the road, and hide out in the bush, in case the bad guys came looking. Which, really, he should have known she'd never do that without him. He really, really should've known this. It would've saved him about twenty minutes or so. She won that not-even-an-arguement, arguement.

Well, to be fair she won because there was a car coming on the road, so Oliver finally gave up, shut up, then grabbed her arm and pulled her into the surrounding underbrush with him. Carrying only his bow and quiver. If they had not wasted the past twenty minutes 'not-argueing,' then maybe they would have thought to carry a gun or something else, too. But alas, they did not.

Or, even, like say...her tablet. She had been startled when he had grabbed her and uh, well it was now either on the roadside or somewhere in the van. Which she did not even remember at all until several minutes later. Too late to go back for it, anyway. Oliver had been distracting her with his hand on her arm, and then when that fell away it was the way he kept nearly stumbling that kept her attentions focused on him and not the electronics she had left behind...pity, really.

So it was that as the sun started to rise, they were slowly ambling along in the...well, wilds. Felicity carrying the bow and quiver now, because...well, because Oliver was not doing so well. He was covered in perspiration, putting his entire focus down to just taking that next step; then one more, then one more…

Until his injured knee finally gave out one too many times, and he knew that he would not be able to get back up anytime soon. He implored Felicity to go on without him, just leave him with a few arrows, since they were surely close to civilization by now.

She said no, of course.

And now she was a bit miffed that he had not the decency to at least collapse near a tree, for a little bit of shelter and shade if nothing else. It was a good half mile in any direction before reaching anything that could be counted as a tree, and she could not drag him on her own. He had even tried to help her a little bit, using his arms to drag his sorry bones around, before he promptly passed out on the first try. Little good her so-called hero was, the tree-like thing was still half a mile away.

Ok. So. Take a step back and evaluate your situation, Felicity. They had no shelter, no way to call for help - again, how had she left the van without her tablet, seriously? - and a limited means to defend themselves. It wasn't looking so great…

First things first. Now that he was unconscious and therefore could not complain, she set about tending to his wounds the best she could. Boy, had he lost a lot of blood...ick. That took her a good few minutes, but once she was done with what she had been able to do, she sat back and took a last look over everything they had, making a mental inventory. Anything to keep her mind active, because it was going on over 24 hours since she had last had any sleep, and she was very tired...it was very difficult to focus.

Then movement in the sky caught her eye. It was a bird, a buzzard, she believed, circling way up high. Felicity snorted; great, just what she needed. Another possible way of demise. When she blinked, the one bird turned into two, and then three, and was that a fourth one? How were they honing in on his location so quickly? Well, she was never intending to leave him anyway, but there was no chance of her leaving him for bird bait, so she grabbed his bow, settled the quiver on the ground next to her, and waited.

She kept her eyes trained on this newest threat, these devil-birds, and her overactive imagination kicked in and she considered the conversations these birds might be having amongst themselves about now.

"Sam, you go for the blonde - I've got dibbs on the meaty one."

"Hows come yous gets the bigger one, Dan? I wants the meaty one!"

"Because I got the brains, see?"

...the birds in her head were sounding more and more like gangsters, and she was probably more than a little sleep deprived if she was giving them this much personality, but anyway…

She didn't notice how the circle of the birds was drawing tighter and tighter, getting lower and lower...until one, the one she'd named 'Sam,' came swooping down directly above Oliver. This would not do. Felicity shot to her feet, waving the bow around as though it were a baseball bat. It was not, but at least it did the trick of diverting the bird, it abandoned ship and flew the other way.

Ha! Round 1, to Felicity. Take that you stinkin' buzzards!

Ah, only...they were far from through.

It took some time before they tried again, but when they did, they were much more bold. And coordinated. As she felt herself starting to drift off, she saw two of them - probably Dan and Sam, again - break off and swoop down, coming at them. She tried to shake the sleepiness from her limbs, rising to her feet and holding the bow at the ready. As she stood there staring at the birds swooping down directly on her, she began to realize just that - the birds weren't so much as aiming for them as for, well, her directly.

Bring it on, Birdos.

She swung at the first one when it was within reasonable striking distance, still not really wanting to actually harm an animal but dang it, she was going to defend herself. And Oliver. Especially Oliver. How would they explain finding his pecked-over corpse dressed in the Green Arrow gear?

And...ugh, what a lovely thought and mental image that presented. Not that she would let that happen; no, only way that was happening was over her dead body. So, she yelled and struck out at the bird that had snuck up behind her, pulling at her hair with its talons. She ducked and swung around at it, but it was already flying off and out of reach. Frowning, she stumbled and sat down heavily next to her unconscious hero.

She wondered if he had ever suffered a bird attack on Lian Yu. It was possible.

She wondered, if he were conscious, just exactly what he would think about all this and what, exactly, he would do. Or have her do. She knew what he would do, because even though the flying creatures would make for very difficult targets indeed, Felicity had no doubt that even half-dead Oliver would make quick work of them. Buzzard-eye, each one, no doubt. Instead of, y'know, bullseye...buzzard-eye…

Ugh. She needed sleep.

"Oliver," Felicity turned to him with a wince, because that hair-tugg had not been gentle. "Now would be a really great time to wake up. In case, if you were waiting for a dramatic entrance…" she trailed off slightly as her attention became diverted, because uh-oh, the vicious demon-birds were making another round, "...now would be a really good time!"

She wished, not for the first time, that she had had the arm strength required at least to pull back on this bow string, but she knew from experience that she did not and if she really tried, let's forget about the whole aiming thing, she also knew she'd be more likely than not to hurt herself. So, she was doing what she could with what she had at her disposal. Hence, bow baseball bat.

There were even more birds now, there had to be. Even more than four or five, maybe like...ten. As she swung at the two she could see dive-bombing her, another one or two struck her from behind, she knew because she could feel the pinch and pain of something against her back and shoulders. A white-hot pain that caused her to scream and, momentarily, made her vision blur. A moment long enough that, some bird - at this point she wasn't even sure if it had been the ones dive-bombing her or not - grabbed Oliver's bow in its claws and pulled.

Oliver's Green Arrow bow was yanked from her grasp by a buzzard.

Oliver was so going to kill her.

Assuming they both survived this and assuming he didn't die laughing first, if she even ever told this particular tale.

And great. Now she had no means to defend herself, standing here with these devil-birds surrounding her. They seemed to recognize this, because after a second or two of pause, as even the birds seemed to realize how important this moment was, with Felicity standing there gaping too, they then went right for her. Eyes wide and jaw clicking shut, Felicity dove for the ground, but even as she started to move she felt the stings all over her flesh. Beaks rained down on her back and shoulders, talons scraping at her arms and legs, anywhere they could reach…

Felicity heard a constant tone pierce her ears as she crawled across the grass, and it took her moment to realize it to be her own screams. She knew what she had to do next, the only thing she could do, but getting there was proving to be a problem. She had one arm trying to protect the back of her neck, the other still trying to beat off the birds from her immediate vicinity as she continued forward. Towards the quiver. An explosive arrow was their only hope.

Then one of the birds got bold and apparently tried to body-slam her head. It did force her downwards more, but worse, it served to knock her glasses right off her face.

"Crap!" Felicity exclaimed, and hissed in great distress as she felt another bird try to take out a good chunk of her side. Sne blindly felt around for the stupid, life-saving pieces of glass, but cursed again as she couldn't find them. Deciding there was no time and trusting that, she was pretty sure, she could tell which one she wanted by feel. She continued crawling forward.

Finally, finally, she reached Oliver's quiver! The stupid man was still dead to the world, by the way, she could tell at a glance. Sleeping peacefully as a horde of demon-birds tried to assassinate her, then him next, she was sure. Huffing to herself, Felicity pulled the quiver into her lap, using one hand again to try and shoo the birds away from them as she slipped her other hand inside the quiver and felt around for the one she wanted. Yes, all the pointed ends were sharp. Yes, she may have slightly sliced open a finger or two, but alas! Her fingers closed around the proper arrowhead.

Next, she had to find the device Oliver used to detonate these arrowheads - which was slightly less painful - then input the proper commands. That done, she threw the arrow up into the air in the direction of the birds still surrounding them, then dove over Oliver so that her upper body would be shielding his head from the ensuing blast.

Yes, she loved animals, but it was life or death for her and her (temporarily) fallen hero here. Closing her eyes, Felicity tightened her grasp on Oliver's jacket beneath her fingertips. There was a roaring noise, and then heat, and then Felicity surrendered to the blissful darkness.

Oliver startled awake, the sound of a woman's scream still echoing in his mind. And not just any woman - sad to say he knew that sound; he would recognize her voice anywhere, but the sad part was that he knew her screams because he had heard them in the past. Terrified screams. Something was wrong. Eyes snapping open, Oliver started to rise, her name on his lips.

An arm halted him. An arm attached to a man he knew, a good friend. But why was he stopping him? Did Diggle know where Felicity was, why her screams were still echoing in his head?

"Felicity?" Was all that came from him instead. From Oliver, that is. He supposed it did about sum it up.

"She's going to be fine. She's getting stitched up right now, but we can go see her soon."

Stitched up? What… and then the memories came flooding back, of the mission, how it all had gone to pot, and how he and Felicity had made it out into the wilds together with little to no supplies. He remembers something about a tree, then nothing. He assumed Digg had eventually found them, but...but then why was Felicity getting stitches? Diggle must have known to explain a little more at the angry/confused look boy wonder was sporting.

"Not sure how much you remember, but it looked like a flock of buzzards set in on the two of you sometime early this morning. One of you...probably Felicity, set off an explosive arrow. That's how I found you. And lucky for you guys, the bad guys had given up by then." Diggle gave him a look, but Oliver could only blink.

Because, what? They had been attacked by birds?

But Diggle had said she was getting stitches. Requiring stitches from a bird attack...Oliver shuddered inwardly. He was supposed to protect her. There he had been, unconscious yet still witness to her screams, as the ringing yet taking place in his head could attest to, defenseless while she had apparently successfully fought off a whole bunch of hungry birds.

He was proud of her, but also undeniably disgusted with himself.

Still. Oliver locked eyes with Diggle. All he could hear were her screams; he needed to see her for himself. Diggle seemed to understand, muttering about how 'she might be out of surgery by now,' but still assisted the limping, stubborn pig of a man out of his perfectly fine hospital room and down the hall.

A few hours later found Oliver, sitting vigil at Felicity's bedside as she fitfully slept. If anyone had dared to even think of saying anything to remove him from the room, they held their tongue upon seeing how, whenever she started to move uneasily in her sleep, his warm hand in a gentle stroke upon her cheek seemed to almost instantly soothe her.