So this a really fun chapter to write. I'm really weird, and I'm sure you'll be wondering why. (Shrug).

Trust Exercise

"Oliver — why do you keep scratching your back?" Felicity asked, after the third time.

"Poison oak," he said, shortly, keeping his eyes on a torn flap of canvas, fluttering quietly from the air currents.

Felicity looked away from the faint blue glow of her mapping device, which she was filling in as they went along. "Who in the what now?"

"Scratch," he said. "Cheshire has a habit with irritating poisons."

"Ohhhh — you mean the Carrie with the claws?"

Oliver shot a sidelong glare at her. "Can you not bring her up in a regular conversation?"

"Oh I'm sorry," said Felicity, pulling the shawl low over her hair as more water dripped onto them from a questionable hole in the canvas roof, "but I gave up on regular when you decided to hide in the back of a wagon with the dead relatives of the Scarecrow from Oz."

As if to prove her point, the wagon rolled over an uneven patch of wall, and the wheels squeaked in protest, the dried bales of grass tumbling past them both. They were both on their stomachs, their heads facing the flapping canvas curtain at the back of the wagon. When the wagon jolted again, one bale landed on her butt. Felicity flicked a stalk of grass from her face and tossed it at Oliver. He only rolled his eyes and tossed a bug through the flap. The putty caught on the iron ledge, the underside of a glowing brazier.

"Nice," she said, in spite of herself, adding the bug to their uplink.

"Almost there," he said, peering through the torn flap. "Remember to duck."

"Mm-hm." Felicity kept watching the intermittent chunks of stone and mortar that showed through the canvas, wondering if she'd ever get a good look over the city walls. Sure, she wasn't there to be a tourist, but still, how often could she tell absolutely nobody that she'd been to a city of assassins inside a Tibetan mountain?

Well, Roy and Dig might be interested. But they'd be getting satellite access to the sights anyway.

Oliver's hand touched her shoulder, warm and steady.

The wagon creaked to a halt, and a brief conversation ensued. Felicity caught fragments of what sounded like Chinese — maybe Hindi — it was too fast to tell. But there was a laugh, and the pressure of Oliver's hand increased abruptly. Felicity ducked, pressed low behind the stacked bales of grass, the faintly warm device pressing against her collarbone. Footsteps went around the wagon, and the curtain cracked, a pane of amber light hitting the spot above her head.

The curtain dropped, leaving them in semi-darkness again. The footsteps receded, and the wagon moved a few feet further. Someone whistled, and the wagon began to sink. Felicity's stomach dropped, like she was in the QC elevator and it was shooting down to the ground floor.

The straw beside her rustled ever so slightly. "Pulley system," Oliver murmured in her ear, and he pulled the flap up, gesturing for her to move closer.

Felicity scooted towards the hole, looking through it like a telescope. For a moment, the brightness of the lights blinded her, but then her vision adjusted and she saw the improbable sprawl of Nanda Parbat, the Assassin's City.

"No way," she breathed, pressing closer, as though she could drink in the oddly archaic sight of a walled city. It resembled pictures of the old Beijing hutongs, the disorderly close-set jumble of low houses and courtyards, beautiful chaos. There were striking red tiles on traditional Chinese gabled roofs, beasts carved out of stone that stood sentry over the streets, torches burning bright and strong to make it brighter than she ever thought possible — for a city that had never seen the sun.

They only spoke when the wagon stopped its descent.

"You eventually get used to the impossible," Oliver murmured thoughtfully, reminding her that their faces were side by side, lit by the same narrow shaft of orange light.

Felicity let the shawl slip past her head, allowing her cheek to briefly brush Oliver's, as the wagon wobbled to a start again and the motion threw their shoulders together. "I still haven't," she answered, resisting the urge to turn her face to his. "You can't just accept things, remember?"

"It's not exactly Vegas with your mother," he said, equally quiet, and made her smile.

Felicity pushed a bale of straw behind her back and adjusted her cramping legs. She watched Oliver's lean back, very still, watchful as a lion in the savannah. They were both crouched near the mouth of the wagon, waiting for a chance to slip away unseen. Patches of the city passed by, meaningless to her in terms of direction, but not to Oliver. She smelled grease fires that made her think of deliciously sketchy street food, the rattle of carts and wagons rolling perilously close, the drawl of old ladies gossiping while the babies and children they minded gurgled and laughed.

She jolted back to the present when Oliver turned and easily, naturally, reached for her hand. The leather glove was warm from the skin beneath, reminding her of other times when she'd felt it against her skin. It was not in any way an appropriate time to be thinking about it, but it did bring back the sense of how much she trusted Oliver to take care of himself when he went about doing his usual Arrow-vigilante stunts. And how much he trusted her, to finally accept that she was going to do the crazy-reckless stunts along with him.

Like jumping out the back of a moving wagon, straight as an arrow, right into traffic.

One hell of a trust exercise.

But —

"Go," he said, and Felicity instinctively tightened her grip on his hand.

The curtain parted and Felicity pitched forward along with Oliver. She hit the ground and rolled, a blur of precarious sound and hurtling danger, only conscious of the grooved cobblestones beneath her back and the sudden feel of Oliver not at her side, but around her —

They hit wall with a dull crunch. Felicity opened her eyes to find a ceiling of wood planks and a wheel behind her head. Apparently, they'd rolled right under a wood cart parked at the side of a house. The wall behind Felicity's back shifted, and she realized belatedly that it wasn't a wall, but Oliver, who'd thrown himself behind her before they made impact.

Oliver's shoulders cracked as he moved away from the wall. "You okay?"

Felicity nodded. "Thanks to a human air mattress."

He made a noise that sounded like a laugh, and winced as they peeled apart from each other, his torso from her back, extricating themselves from the confusing tangle of knees and crisscrossed legs. Felicity kicked her way loose of her ridiculous robe and slid out from the bottom of the cart first, brushing herself off and tightening the shawl over her hair. She chanced a look around, but they were off the main road, near a row of tethered wagons behind a house.

Oliver followed, straightening up with enviable grace, nonchalantly pulling up his hood to hide his face. He glanced back at her before he started to lead the way — like he'd somehow memorized the map of the city, which she realized that was probably true, by Oliver-Queen-standards, anyway.

Felicity checked that the device was still in the folds of her robe, blew out her breath slowly and prayed that nothing would go wrong.

Bwahahaha - will things go wrong?