Warning: Laurel Lance is in this chapter. Not a Lauriver shipper or a Laurel hater, but yeah just advance warning. More commentary to follow...

Final Piece

"Holy…" Felicity jammed her fingers to Diggle's pulse, to make sure he was still breathing. He was still half-inside his car, slumped as though he'd been hit at the back of the head before he could get out completely. But from the strong beat under her fingers, she knew he was fine.

"Dig. Dig!"

She shook him, but he was out cold. Felicity whipped out the tablet for Roy's tracker. It was in his uniform, and out cold or not, it'd still ping his location…

…Twenty feet away. Felicity found him with a gigantic purple swelling under his chin from a very impressive kung-fu move, she assumed. She'd already called Laurel — who was on the other side of the city training with Ted Grant. They didn't know anything.

Felicity shoved the tablet under her arm and bent over Roy, tucking his arms in so she could drag him snag-free to the car, which was about the only way she could manage to move him.

"Too. Much. Salmon. Ladder." It was worse than dragging a ton of bricks, which in all fairness, could have been her fault. She'd been lapsing on the fitness routine lately, and her regular ten sit-ups a week really did make a difference.

Moving Diggle from the driver's seat was a little more complicated. It meant having to drag him all the way out of the car and then on top of Roy, who was squished into the backseat of Diggle's car.

"Can't do this," Felicity said, dropping Diggle's arms with a limp thud. "Whoops," she added, as he grunted unconsciously.

Time to call in some backup. Favor-friends to the rescue. What was the point of all that boxing if she couldn't lift two guys? While she waited for Laurel to pick up, Felicity opened up her tablet to check on Oliver. Her jaw dropped at the surveillance footage.

"Hello?"

"Problem," Felicity said, as the unmistakable figure of Nyssa al Ghul circled Oliver, who was still strapped to the bed. "Big, big problem."

Felicity burst into the Foundry, well aware that Oliver was long gone, but not in anything remotely resembling an accepting mood until she saw it for herself. But when she saw the depressions on the bed instead of Oliver, she wanted so badly to let her knees buckle and just — stop. After all this, the League had to come back for him. Just three days.

They'd failed. Again. Behind her, Laurel made a noise partway between a gasp and a curse, and slammed her fist into a desk. The noise made Felicity jump, and focus on the silently amused figure of Ra's al Ghul's daughter.

"Nyssa al Ghul." She looked amused. "Heir to the —"

"Save it." Felicity had never been angrier. "You of all people know what makes people leave the League — and you can't even spare him some time —"

"I assure you, Felicity Smoak," said Nyssa, her voice cutting through the air between them, "that Oliver Queen left of his own accord."

"You mean after you threatened him," said Laurel, icily. "Like you threatened my sister."

Nyssa's eyes seemed to grow blacker by the second. Her chest rose and fell more sharply, but otherwise she was still serene. "I remember you," she said, tilting her head slightly to the side. "From Sara's grave. Laurel, correct? Laurel Lance. The jilted one. The damaged one. The one they couldn't fix."

"You forgot angry," Laurel snarled.

"Tell me," said Nyssa, with a gratuitously long stare at Laurel's legs, highlighted by the training outfit she was still wearing. "Have you learned to use your hips yet?"

Laurel looked like she was about to use another part of her anatomy, every hair on her head bristled with pent-up rage — at the woman she probably saw as the representation of everything that corrupted her sister's soul.

Felicity hurriedly held out her arm to stop Laurel, wiping her face with the other. "Why are you still here, Nyssa? You could have gone with Oliver."

"She's here to gloat," Laurel interrupted, attempting to brush Felicity aside. But she held firm, watching Nyssa with as much calm as she could manage. Oddly, Laurel being so angry was helping her find the kind of inappropriate-to-situation calm she often questioned in Oliver.

"No," said Nyssa. "I am not here to gloat. You could say I understand Oliver Queen's dilemma. Stay, and the League descends. Go, and his friends follow, entirely too loyal for their own good." Her eyes lingered on Felicity, making her shiver with wariness. "It seems to me that everyone would be best served if the Demon's Head was taken out with an arrow between the eyes."

Laurel, unlike Felicity, hadn't heard as much about the "Demon". Which basically disadvantaged her by about 0.5%, since Felicity basically knew nothing either. She didn't even have a photo from the super-villain database (and they kind of had one). "Ra's al Ghul?" said Laurel, in a voice dripping with suspicion. "You want to kill your own dad?"

Nyssa was playing with a scary-looking foot-long of a steel dagger, whirling it from one hand to the other like it was a toy to her. "One could say that I am of the belief that everyone's lives — including yours, and by extension, Oliver Queen's — would be infinitely better if my father was no longer on this earth."

"Why are you telling us this?" Laurel demanded.

Nyssa turned her eyes on Felicity, with an uncomfortable look of knowingness. "Because Oliver Queen needs to remain in the League in order to help me kill my father, a task he's pledged himself to complete. A task he can't complete with you all hounding for his return."

"Why Oliver?" Laurel's hard-edged voice hurt even Felicity's ears. "He's not even one of you."

Felicity swore Nyssa flinched when Laurel said not one of you, but whatever it'd been, it was gone too soon to tell.

"I have allies in the League, ones who will back me if I choose to stand against my father. But none are his favorites, not like Oliver. My father takes a unique pleasure in attempting to turn him, and only I can see that it hasn't worked."

"And you'll release him after he helps you?" Felicity asked. "Like Sara?"

Laurel turned to look at her in surprise. Felicity only knew that Sara had been released from her oath before, because Oliver had told her. Something that — based on Nyssa's unnervingly cold smile — was going to become important, even though she didn't know how.

"I will release him. But for that to happen, I need one more piece for my plan. And you will help me there."

Felicity turned away. "No." Then, louder. "No."

She pulled off her glasses and massaged her eyes. She was tired, so tired. There were two pinpricks of pain behind her eyes, drilling into her skull, and she just wanted to be alone under her blanket, away from Nyssa and the darkness she represented, away from Laurel — who she wasn't even officially friends with — and just close her eyes. Sleep out the night and wake up in the sun, to plan another way to get Oliver back to Starling.

Felicity replaced her glasses on her nose and took a deep breath. "Enough pieces. Enough of your super villain manipulation mojo. We don't need you to get Oliver back. And we're not going to help you break into some high-tech vault to get some weird funky weapon you think has mystical powers —"

"—You mistake me." Nyssa rose from her seat, striding towards them both. Felicity took an involuntary step back as Nyssa loomed in front of her, away from the spicy smell that seemed to radiate off Nyssa's robes, the arid scent of dusty wind. "The final piece I need is right in this room."

Ha, I told you I had a really weird idea about the LoA and Team Arrow. Anyway, sorry if Laurel's written oddly, because to be honest, I pretty much always skip through her parts in the episodes. She's always angry in my head :-\

Will try to update as soon as I can (Y) Also - the reviews are so nice and so encouraging, thank you so much for reading the stories and liking them. It's a real motivation to keep going :)