They found Ben sitting in the tree just outside the hatch, during the commotion beneath him, he had clawed away at the opening, but had been unable to get in. When it opened and he scampered inside, the look on his face was one of relief when he bounced between Oliver and Felicity, dragging the knapsack he'd been clutching, along behind him.
While he couldn't speak a language they could understand, it was fairly obvious that he was happy to see them both.
And when he handed the bag to Felicity alone, and she patted his little head in approval, he found his way to the nearest pillow and lay down; exhausted.
"We should sleep too," Oliver remarked as he watched Felicity pull things from the bag.
She looked up at him and shook her head. "No, I can finish this tonight."
He took her shoulder and she sighed, the relief of it all finally hitting for just a fraction of a moment. "It can wait."
She felt tears welling up in her eyes before she found what she had been looking for in the bag and stood up. "I don't want to spend any more time here than we need to, I'm afraid," she whispered as two tears sprung from her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of her hand and bit her lip to still it for a moment. "I want to go home, I want us to go home. And," she paused to look down at her trembling hand holding the single wire, "I need to do this. Please, I need to."
He kissed her forehead and she closed her eyes to immerse herself in it, imagining what it might be like without everything surrounding them. While her eyes were still closed, Oliver gently lifted her chin and kissed the tip of her nose.
"I meant what I said," he assured her with a quiet, gentle voice.
Her eyes fluttered open to see him looking down at her. "I meant it too."
/
Exhausted, it was some time before midday when Felicity woke up the next day. Oliver, with barely a scrape on him, was busy scribbling notes on a map he'd drawn of the compound. Her body ached, she was hungry, tired, cold, bruised, and a little battered; but she had finished the remote.
Today they were getting off the island.
Or they were going to die trying.
She tried to push the second thought to the back of her head as she slowly roused herself from their bed.
"Do you think we can do it?" Felicity asked as Oliver turned to see her walking towards him. "You haven't been able to before."
"I never had you before." She smiled weakly at his compliment. "I mean it Felicity, my strength and my speed, they only get me part of the way there. They expect me. What they never counted on was you."
She looked down as she blew out an unsteady breath.
"That will be their biggest mistake, and our biggest advantage," he added as he took her hand.
"I hope so," she spoke, subdued in her self-doubt.
"Will it work?" he asked as he nodded towards her tech.
She nodded, it wasn't that which she doubted. "It'll work, but what if I… what if I freeze?"
"Last night you fought a super soldier and you saved my life," he spoke softly. "You, are the strongest person I've ever met."
She looked down at his map and nodded resolutely.
"Let's do this then. Let's go home."
/
To say Oliver took the camp by a surprise was an understatement. For whatever reasons, they had expected him to retreat into the jungle, and so had sent out tiny pockets of men, spreading themselves thin. There had been no time to replace those already lost, and there wasn't any other enhanced person left on the island.
What drones they sent out, Felicity intercepted and turned them on anything that aided them; trucks, generators, the control towers.
An utter state of chaos engulfed the encampment as they scrambled like ants from a crumbling hill.
She opened every door that stood in his way and not a single person on that island could take back from her what she'd so skilfully corrupted.
Perfectly timed denotations in the caves below the encampment created sinkholes, and those not caught in them scattered – unwilling to lay down their lives for Damien's grand scheme anymore.
Some left in helicopters, clinging to the sides as parts of the encampment crumbled off the edge of the cliff, and others ran fruitlessly into the jungles, hoping to find protection there.
From the passenger seat of an amphibious plane in a nearby hangar, Felicity watched through the drones' cameras and listened to Oliver through her earpiece as the operation came to its knees.
"Start the plane Felicity, I'm on my way," Oliver remarked through the earpiece. His voice was breathy and a little stunted, but she could hear the smile in it all the same.
"You're not here yet," she replied, before she aimed a drone at a petrol tank and blew it sky high.
"Nice shot."
"Thank you."
"I'm on my way Felicity, start the plane."
Felicity slipped from the plane, leaving her door open, and made her way towards the large, hangar doors. With a concerted effort she pushed open one and moved towards the other. Oliver had decided the plane usually kept in this hangar would be the preferred way out, as it lay further on from the more used runway, and the plane inside was rarely used due to its age. He had been right, when Felicity snuck in there early, she found everything in the hangar coated in a thin film of dust.
As she was opening the second rollaway door, she felt the jab of something hard and cylindrical at her back.
"Turn around slowly," a male voice growled in her ear. It wasn't one she recognised, but she did as was asked, and turned slowly. The jab she had felt was the barrel of a pistol which was now pointed at her chest.
She didn't recognise the man in army fatigues, but he was covered in soot and superficial lacerations across his face.
"You're going to fly me out of this place," he remarked before he put his hand to his stomach and Felicity realised he must have been injured, though she couldn't see anything obvious.
"I'm not a pilot," Felicity replied succinctly. "And I'm pretty sure when my pilot gets here, he'll say no extras."
"Not if I have you," he panicked, and it appeared to Felicity at that moment she was a lot calmer than he was.
"You see your camp burning down?" she asked as she nodded towards across the fields to the billowing pylons of smoke. "You do know that's him doing it right? All alone, how many of you guys verses one of him, and you think a tiny gun in a shaking fist is going to get you what you want?"
"Shut the fuck up," he cursed as he raised the gun to her head. "Maybe I'll just shoot you and take the plane myse—Fuck!" he screamed as he looked down to find Ben (a rabid monkey for all he knew) biting into his calf.
Before he could shake Ben from his leg, a rotten melon hit him in the back, followed almost immediately by a barrage of whatever the troop of monkeys in the nearby trees had at their disposal, from rotten fruit, to what Felicity was pretty sure was faeces, and even a black boot they'd stolen from somewhere.
When they rushed towards him in what could only be described as a frenzy, the man dropped his weapon in fright and took off running towards the perceived safety of the jungle, yelling that Felicity wasn't "fucking worth it."
The troop tenaciously followed him into the thick jungle with Felicity's thanks, before she tucked the discarded gun into her shorts, pushed the door the rest of the way open, and ran back to the plane.
With the propeller started, all she needed was Oliver.
/
There wasn't really anyone left willing to fight him, and the handful that tried gave up seconds after they realised how thoroughly outmatched they were.
The hangar was a short sprint away; he was so close to freedom. At least from the physical binds of the island.
As he started the sprint, something caught him like a gust of ferocious wind, that pushed him violently towards the edge of the compound. A tidal wave of dust exploded from his feet as they skidded to a halt a dozen feet from the cliff. But it was only a reprieve of a few seconds before the force pushed him again. Oliver gritted his teeth and bared down into the head of the invisible force, but it still veered him a foot or two from the barrier at the edge of the cliff.
Darhk.
"Give me my book Oliver!" he demanded as he brushed concrete dust off his suit while he walked. His power was strong and Oliver had expected that. The tether he had to the island was steeped in mystery and shrouded with the unbelievable, but it was undeniable.
"It's over Damien, your Jericho is burning," Oliver taunted. The feeling ripping through his body was like burning irons from the inside out, but he held his ground.
Damien laughed blithely. "You thought you could walk in here and destroy what I've spent decades building?" He stopped a foot from Oliver, but Oliver's arms wouldn't move. "You thought you could beat me?"
Darhk pushed his palms forward and the fence behind Oliver flew back into the air before it crashed down onto the jagged rocks below it. "Purgatory thrives on death Oliver," he goaded, "I thrive on death."
"Every drop of blood you've given this island has made me stronger." He lifted one hand sharply vertical while he pulled the other down, and the force through Oliver's body felt like he was being tortuously split at his torso.
"I created you," Damien spat. "I showed you power. I gave you somewhere to thrive."
The pressure intensified and Oliver felt his body at its limit. "You could have had so much," Darhk said with a twisted smile before he dropped both of his hands and Oliver fell, breathless, to the ground.
"I never asked for this," Oliver panted before he picked himself up. "You took my mind and you distorted me."
"No, I made you better!" Damien hissed as he twisted his right hand into a fist.
Oliver grasped as he felt his heart constricting, as if caught in a vice.
/
Felicity looked at her countdown clock and fretted with her lip.
Two minutes left, no Oliver.
/
Oliver lifted his head defiantly and through gritted teeth he answered Darhk's taunt. "She makes me better."
"She makes you weak!" Damien hissed, he opened his fist and Oliver gasped. But the relief was momentary as a second later Damien drove his hand towards the ground and a crushing weight pushed down on Oliver like a building resting on his shoulders. "You were prepared to die for her, that's weakness."
Oliver's face grew red with exertion as he struggled to push himself upwards against Darhk's driving force down. "You're wrong," he gritted.
Against the invisible, crushing force, Oliver ploughed forward and rushed Damien, tackling him to the ground.
"Oliver, two minutes," came Felicity's voice through the crackling noise around him.
He pulled the other half of the journal from his pocket. "You want this?" he called at Damien as he lifted it into the air.
Wild and manic, Damien's eyes flew towards the tattered book. "Give it to me?" he hissed, all sanity left him as his eyes grew dark and his skin red with rage.
"You want this?!" Oliver yelled as another chain of explosions happened a few feet away.
Damien lunged, but Oliver moved and the Island's patron teetered near the cliff edge. The island had taken it's toll on his mind even as the power surged through him.
"It's all yours," Oliver hissed and he threw the journal into the air.
Damien reached for it, abandoning his guard, and as the journal touched his fingertips, Oliver slammed his shoulder into Damien's chest. He lost his footing and screamed as his feet scampered over the edge of the cliff.
In a hale of screams, Damien Darhk plummeted off the cliff and hit the treacherously jagged rocks below. Oliver peered over the edge just as a rough wave crashed into the rocks, swallowing up Damien's body; his island hadn't saved him.
"Get moving Felicity," Oliver panted into the comms.
He had 90 seconds, he wasn't going to make it.
"What?" Felicity called back.
"Get that plane down the runway."
"You aren't here."
He smiled as he looked straight ahead to the edge of the dusty track.
"I will be. Trust me."
/
Felicity looked down at the controls and whispered a Jewish prayer under her breath, one that she'd heard her mother use more often than she realised.
The light plane started moving down the dirt airstrip as Felicity panicked with the yoke.
"Oliver is that?" Her words drifted off as she squinted into the distance. It was Oliver, sprinting down the runway towards her.
40 seconds.
Her whole body shrunk into itself as she looked over her shoulder at the open door behind her. She felt the front wheel lift off the ground and she screamed reactively.
Oliver ignored the slap of the wind as he sprinted to the lifting plane.
30 seconds.
He caught the wing and pulled himself up as the nose lifted higher into the air. Felicity helplessly held the yoke of the plane as it sped towards the end of the runway... and the sheer drop.
20 seconds.
Oliver's arm muscles fired with everything he had left to give as he fought the drag of the ground beneath his feet to pull himself up and, just as there was a mere 20 feet left... and 15 seconds, his hand reached into the plane.
"Oliver?!" Felicity screamed as they reached the precipice.
As the encampment erupted into funnels of eruptions, the plane dropped off the end in a nose dive.
Seconds before they met the same fate as Damien, Oliver wrestled the yoke upwards, his hands atop Felicity's, until the plane levelled out and flew through a tuft of white clouds.
Oliver looked over his shoulder to see the island engulfed in flames.
It was done.
It was over.
After a carefully orchestrated switch, Felicity tucked her feet up on the passenger seat and finally released a trembled breath. "You made it."
Oliver looked over from the pilot's seat and smiled. "I made a promise."
A clunk behind them made both Oliver and Felicity turn their heads sharply towards the noise, only to find the sheepish smile of their curious macaque stowaway; Ben.
| posted originally on Archive of Our Own dot org