Countdown to The Climb.

Final Stretch

"We could run, you know," Felicity said, jokingly.

Oliver glanced at her with a little smile. "Already paid my deposit on the room in Nanda Parbat."

She sucked in a painfully cold breath of mountain air, praying she wouldn't get a nosebleed. "That was actually kinda funny. You know, if it wasn't also kinda tragic."

Oliver's hand was warm between her shoulder blades as they waited for the others to catch up. They both stood at the crest of the slope, the start of the downhill hike towards the village, tiny as a diorama in the distance. She saw the first pinprick of lights in the windows, in the pale blue glow of twilight.

Felicity silently replayed the ARGUS acknowledgement in her head, along with the worries about Roy and Diggle being unresponsive to communications. She'd checked via GPS and the van was still parked in the village, but the computers were down. Maybe they'd had to leave the house for some reason — or they'd had to hide the tech.

Either way, it quickened her pace. She needed to see them — to make sure.

Felicity had to avert her eyes from the rising glare of the sun, at the impending brightness of the snow covering the ground all around them. They'd slowed down at the slope to help some of the children down — the ones who were practically falling down the hill on their unsteady legs. Martin reached for Felicity's hand with the unquestioning trust she expected least from anyone associated with Amanda Waller. They made their way down the slope together, Martin asking questions about density and the weather patterns of Tibet the whole time, and she met Oliver's wordless glance over Martin's head.

"He's sweet," she whispered, after Martin moved out of earshot. "Nothing like her."

Oliver still didn't look very convinced, and Felicity rolled her eyes. The weapons Kang and the rest had stolen from their underground training rooms were glinting in the light of the rising sun, something Felicity was starting to worry about, that they were making themselves too conspicuous.

"Oliver —" she began, after Kang's sword shot a blinding death-glare in her direction. "Should they try to cover…?"

She trailed off, because something had caught her eye. Over the top of the slope, she could still see the mountain, unevenly heaped with snow. But under the sun, there was a new metallic glint, the same kind of glint the children's weapons were giving off. Like someone hadn't bothered to camouflage them either.

Oliver tensed suddenly beside her. He drew his bow and shot an arrow into the distance — so quick that it registered as a single action.

Then his mouth was at her ear and he was shoving her away and she heard only one word: "Run."

Of course she wouldn't run. Oliver couldn't afford to be annoyed, but he was. He'd forced them all to retreat off the crest, hating to relinquish the advantage of higher ground to their pursuers, but he had no choice. All the distractions, reduced to a single goal — to make sure everyone reached the bottom of the hill. As soon as they hit the grass, they'd be within sprinting distance of the village.

Until then, he'd guard them. There were at least four pursuers — League-trained, all of them presumably ordered to kill. Whether they were scouts send out in pursuit of him, or guards who'd noticed the disturbance, it wasn't likely they'd stop to talk. They'd recognize Oliver, and it would get back to Ra's al Ghul.

As repugnant as the thought of taking lives in front of children, Oliver didn't have a choice. And he fired to kill.

Oliver's arrow hit one in the shoulder, knocking him flat onto the ground. "Get away," he said to Kang, loading another.

The boy had a sword in either hand, and was clearly not intending anything other than to fight.

"Don't know how useful that bow's gonna be when they reach us," Kang said, flashing a grin that was somehow both cocky and earnest.

Oliver shot another arrow — deflected off a sword. It was very hard not to wish for exploding arrows, not when the assassins kept getting up.

"Are you prepared to kill?" he asked harshly, in the moment of silence.

Kang glanced at the retreating children, then back at Oliver. Under the easygoing exterior, Oliver saw the flash of steel.

"For them," Kang said, and nodded.

After a beat, Oliver nodded too. "Move," he said, shoving Kang ahead of him. The assassins were closing in.

It was chaos. Children were stumbling over the uneven ground, needing to be carried or guided. Felicity was a blur of gold in his peripheral vision, scooping up a fallen kid and running towards the bottom of the hill. Her eyes darted up towards him, a flash of pale blue.

"Behind you!" she yelled.

Oliver turned and caught the edge of a sword on his bow. He could hear the enraged breathing in his attacker, see it in the frenzied black eyes showing above the hood and cowl. Metal screamed as Oliver dragged his bow out from under the blade — muscles in his shoulder tearing in protest — and swung. The sword spun through the air, an arc of silver under the dawn light. Oliver kneed him in the chest and shot an arrow straight through the heart.

Fresh blood crystallized in the frozen air as Oliver took off. Dead men told no tales.

"Go!" Felicity rushed the children into the grassy field, sending them sprinting into the village. "Find somewhere to hide and don't come out for anyone else but us."

She said it over and over again, until the words were starting to lose meaning. Different children in her arms, their sweaty hands leaving hers as she sent them in a desperate dash towards uncertain safety.

Oliver was fighting a League member holding a gigantic axe that made her heart beat uncomfortably fast into her throat, and Kang was — shockingly — holding his own against another. Their swords were moving so fast that she had to avert her eyes to avoid flash-blindness. Behind her, Mia was guarding the children that were still running, firing arrows into the pursuing assassins. Three at least, who were firing back, careless of the children still making it across the grassland. Mia's hair was as conspicuous as a traffic cone under the rising sun as she popped up and down from behind the rock and fired. The other teenagers with weapons were crouching behind the scattered boulders, taking cover as the arrows sparked off the stones. One of them was throwing knives that kept glancing off the assassin's swords.

"Must admit, I wasn't expecting that," Mia said, crouching behind a rock as arrows skittered into the dried grass around them. For someone so tiny, she held a horn bow that was almost as tall as she was — with the kind of ease that would make Roy feel very competitive. Mia shoved her ragged fringe out of her eyes and fired another arrow around the rock, ducking as a returning one broke across the stone.

Felicity was running out of ideas. She'd lost her knife in the house, back in Nanda Parbat. That left either grass, or…

The snow flashed blindingly around them.

She groped in the ground, gathering handfuls of snow and packing it into a hard sphere. It'd been an embarrassingly long time since she'd had a snowball fight, much less one with pointy things flying all over the place.

"I'm going to regret this," she said, clutching it in front of her chest as she debated whether or not to go through with it.

Too late. Mia made a sound of protest as Felicity jumped up from behind the rock and let it fly.

Felicity still wasn't sure what she'd been aiming for. She just saw something wearing black and threw it like fourth-period gym, softball edition.

And missed. Completely. Felicity would have died of embarrassment right then and there, but it soared past one of the assassins, distracting him enough for Mia to fire. Her arrow caught him in the arm and two more got his legs in quick succession. A snowball crashed into his face, knocking him flat onto the ground. Felicity spun around in surprise. One of the kids — the one who'd been throwing knives — grinned at her, and hefted another enormous snowball between his hands.

"Kang!" Mia suddenly leaped up and over the boulder.

"Don't!" Felicity tried to catch her, but Mia was too quick. Cursing, she took off after her.

Just ahead, Kang was bleeding from a wound in his side, on his back and reaching for the fallen swords as the assassin raised his for the deathblow. Mia's arrow glanced off the blade with a screech and Kang rolled, grabbing the swords and coming up fighting.

But they didn't see the shadow looming on the hill above them. Felicity did, just as ten bladed shadows of steel claws cut across the snow.

Bwahaha.