Nyssa Al Ghul
"IF YOU CAN'T GET SOMEONE OUT OF YOUR HEAD, THEN MAYBE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE,"
I remember the first time it happened.
It was a couple of days after Oliver Queen had arrived at Nanda Parbat to take his rightful place as Al Sahim. While many knew of his skills and strength, not many knew of his unwillingness to claim the throne; nobody knew of the man behind the mask.
I didn't either. Sarab did.
Oliver called him Maseo. The two of them developed an unlikely friendship from long before Oliver had even entered Nanda Parbat; the familiarity between both men was too obvious to miss. Maseo became Oliver's only source of comfort in the place during his first days. The two men were often seen speaking in hushed voices together when my father wasn't around, but no one dare defy the heir to the throne so no one reported the odd conversations back to my father.
I remember the first time it happened.
Maseo pulled me aside one night after I had finished training and told me to fetch Oliver. Told me to tell him to come to the balcony at the east wing.
Maseo was more of a father to me than my own. So I obliged.
It was far too late for there to be a multitude of guards surrounding the area and it allowed me to easily slip in through the various quarters until I reached Oliver's, gently twisting his doorknob as to warn him of no threat suppose he was awake.
He wasn't.
It was the first time that I had seen the man with his guard down; looking anything but wild and ready to fight.
Living with men like Oliver Queen, being the kind of person Oliver Queen was, knowing what it feels like to have to fight for every moment in life unless you want to be killed, I did not touch him or shake him awake that night.
Instead, I had called him by his name, the name that was granted to him by his parents, "Oliver Queen,"
I remember saying it softly as to not wake my father and cause a commotion.
The first time it happened, Oliver Queen opened his eyes, breathing out the name that could not have been misunderstood for anything else,
"Felicity?"
He looked around the room, and for a moment, I saw something other than darkness infiltrate his eyes; I saw hope.
I had put my hands behind my back and took a step backward away from the man, giving him the privacy of vulnerability. I had given him the opportunity to gather his thoughts back to Nanda Parbat and away from the blond haired woman I know saved my Sara's life.
I was wrong to think that he would be able to get Felicity Smoak out of his mind.
Because that was the first time of many times it happened.
The Second time it happened, we were in the garden.
Oliver and I, at this point, were anything but friends, but were cordial to each other for the sake of Maseo, who looked truly happy when he was taking walks around the paths with the two of us, talking about herbs and plants.
The second time it happened, the three of us were walking through the gardens some of the female escorts tended to. It was the one bright and colourful area in the whole vicinity, and it was Maseo's favourite place.
The second time it happened, Oliver stopped midway through our stroll and reached down to pick up a flower. A lavender.
Maseo had tilted his head towards the purple petals and said, "It's a..."
Oliver interrupted him, looking so lost in thought it was almost as if he wasn't there anymore, "A lavender. It's one of Felicity's favourite flowers. She'll probably put it into that ugly vase when I bring this home to..."
He had trailed off, before straightening and clasping his hands behind his back, clearing his throat and moving forward, asking questions about each and every other plant in the garden to distract us from his obvious slip.
He had left minutes later, clutching the lavender on one hand. His eyes a dark stormy mess and I remember thinking that the Oliver Queen that Maseo and I witnessed when he was talking about Felicity Smoak was probably the one that girls were rumoured to swoon over and men were rumoured to idolize.
It didn't stop after that.
I soon learned that Felicity Smoak had somehow found a way to occupy a part of Oliver Queen's brain. She was in every word he said, everything he did, every breath he took. She was in the glasses on his nightstand, and the picture on his phone. Felicity Smoak may have been in Starling City, but she never left Nanda Parbat.
She had never left Oliver Queen.
The memories fall back into place as I stalk through the roofs of the city, slipping in and out of places that our two rouge assassins are most likely to be. Usually, a task like this would only take a few minutes; men and women of the League will disperse throughout the area and will find the intended target before the hour hits. Now, I have been travelling around this wretched city for hours and have not found one sign of Hamaza and Fadir.
When the clock strikes six in the evening, I take a well deserved, momentary break, losing the League Uniform and replacing it with something more suitable to blend more proficiently with the crowd. The last thing I need at the moment is Mayor Oliver Queen on my ass.
And just as I collect my coffee from the barista and take a nice, long sip, I hear the gasp of someone so familiar, followed by a set of unique words I have never heard anyone but one utter,
"Oh Frack!"
I swivel gracefully on my heels to come face to face with the familiar blonde, only to find her attention already focused on me, her eyes wide with fear, anger and calculation.
She tries to be subtle when she reaches into her purse to pull out her phone, but I quickly grab her hand in a painful grip and drag her out of the coffee shop, dumping my own precious drink into the dumpster nearby, needing both my hands in case Ms. Smaok tries anything irrational.
"I can't believe you have the guts to walk into my city, kidnap me in broad daylight, throw away a perfectly good cup of coffee that I would have drank if you didn't and expect to get away with all of it without Oliver figuring out." She sputters out in one breath once I drag her into a deserted alley.
"I'm not here for trouble Felicity Smoak," I calmly tell her, an idea formulating in my head.
She rolls her eyes, "That's what they all say. If Oliver were here, he'd have pinned you down to the ground the minute you touched his arm."
I don't notice it then. Probably because I was too busy contemplating her sentence and deeming it possible.
However, I give the woman in front of me a cocky shrug, "I would like to see him try."
Then, quickly gathering opportunity, I speak before she can do anything to jeopardize my plan, "Don't you want to know what I'm doing Ms. Smoak?"
From everything that I have collected from what Oliver Queen said around Nanda Parbat, I know that Felicity Smoak hates mysteries. They are something she needs to solve; the faster, the better.
She doesn't say anything; a silent prompt for me to keep going.
"As you know, after my father died, the League Disbanded temporarily. Malcolm Merlyn is now the new Head but some left the League and are seen and heard to be going rogue. They are on a killing spree and two of them are in Starling City at the moment. I've made it my mission to get them out and bring them back to Nanda Parbat."
I should have known that Felicity Smoak would not have taken the half-assed explanation because she glares suspiciously at me before asking, "I thought you didn't want anything to do with the League anymore."
I smirk, "Consider this a thank you to Mr. Merlyn for letting me out of the League."
I wait for her to catch up on my plan.
She doesn't fail to deliver, "Why are you telling me all this. For all you know, I can leave right now and tell Oliver. I don't even have to move my legs to tell Oliver."
She waves her phone in the air; the phone she somehow managed to get out of her purse.
Feeling confident, I take a step closer to her, tracking her thumb and phone in my peripheral vision in case she tries something, "Because, Ms. Smoak, you are going to help me find the assassins.
She starts laughing, clutching her stomach while I watch on unimpressed, "You think I'm going to help you? Did you hit your head or something? You should not have thrown out that coffee."
I shake my head, knowing that this plan will work because I know her greatest weakness.
"Think of it this way Ms. Smoak. You have two murderers running around the city killing innocents every hour. Your boyfriend, my husband, cannot don the hood until dusk. You have the means to track them down in a fraction of the time until their next kill. You can say no and I'll be on my merry way and we'll forget this ever happened."
I already knew she was going to say yes, but she surprises me when she murmurs to herself loudly enough so that I can hear, "Oliver has his campaign event to go to today too. He shouldn't have to make a choice."
I didn't notice it then either.
She looks at me with a newfound fire in her eyes and a fierce expression, "Okay. But if we do this, we do it my way. No unnecessary killing, bloodshed, and nothing that will get you on the public news. Oliver doesn't need anymore on his plate."
Oddly enough, I'm so elated by her answer that I don't even recognize it then. I just give her a sharp nod and then walk away, fully expecting her to follow me.
We reach the site where I had dropped of my weapons, and I grab onto the largest knife in the pack, hiding it in my modern trenchcoat, and placing the smaller one through my pants, letting it rest against my lower spine.
At her arched brows, I clarify, "You insult your intelligence if you think they will leave without a fight."
And as we approach the deserted building that I have been camping out in for the past day, I hear whisper quietly under her breath, "This is the building Oliver wanted to buy out for the shelter."
I don't think too much of the observation, letting Ms. Smoak do her thing on her little device, my focus partially on getting into the shaggy building and partially on the two red circles that have yet to locate the assassins.
Ms. Smoak footsteps make a loud crunch in the gravel as she halts, and the sound is followed by two beeps from her device.
I nod at her, "You found them. Tell me their locations and I'll handle it from there,"
She looks up from her tablet, eyes wide, lips pursed and shakes her head left and right, her hair flying around in the same direction and I glare at her.
"What do you mean, No?"
She looks around hastily, and I follow her movements, getting an inkling of what she found out.
"You don't need their locations. You're here,"
And with that statement, I pull her down just in time for a dart to zip past us, my two former colleagues finally making an appearance, decked in Leauge uniform from head to toe.
Felicity, who has probably been in situations as such, swiftly and stealthily crawls over to a small spot behind a couple of garbage bins, muttering so quietly to herself only I can hear, and must strain to do so;
"Oliver is going to kill me if he figures out. Oliver is going to be so pissed once he figures out. Oliver is going to murder Nyssa once he figures out. Oliver will lose his mind if I don't come back,"
I tune her out eventually, preferring to focus on the two assassins in front of me, their swords blared out in a display of readiness to fight.
And so we do. The fight is relatively simple. They are no match for me, who has been learning only the best of combats since I was old enough to crawl. But it just so happens, that I have extremely precious cargo with me; cargo that I will probably be hunted down for should anything happen to her. Which means that my focus is taken away from the fight for a fraction of a second every minute to check and make sure Ms. Smoak is faring well.
It's during one of those split seconds, that Fadir gets an upper hand on me, swerving swiftly to attack me from the back, while Hamaza keeps both my hands occupied in front of me.
I prepare myself for the sharp pain of a stab that Fadir is going to inflict on my back, but as I push Hamaza into the wall, I don't feel it, turning around in time to see Fadir tumble onto the ground due to the force of the hit Ms. Smoak gave him with the metal beam she found on the ground.
She looks wide-eyed in shock but screams my name as Hamaza gets back up, and as I'm occupied with her, Felicity curses as Fadir gets back up.
She fares well, Ms. Smoak, hitting Fadir in the crotch where it will hurt before he can even fully right himself up off the ground, I effectively knock Hamaza out by them, just in time to see Fadir punch Felicity onto the ground, but before he can stab her, I have him unconscious and handcuffed.
I rush to Felicity Smoak, who lies on the ground, eyes closed and breathing even. I tug on her shoulders and shake her awake, calling out her full name.
Perhaps it was the number of times it has happened over the course of just an hour. Or maybe it was the striking familiarity of the situation; me using their full name to ease them awake. However, she wakes up and calls out one name
"Oliver,"
It echoes through the alley and brings me back in time to Nanda Parbat into Oliver Queen's room.
Instead, I had called him by his name, the name that was granted to him by his parents, "Oliver Queen,"
I remember saying it softly as to not wake my father and cause a commotion.
The first time it happened, Oliver Queen opened his eyes, breathing out the name that could not have been misunderstood for anything else,
"Felicity?"
He looked around the room, and for a moment, I saw something other than darkness infiltrate his eyes; I saw hope.
The same hope that is easily replaced by fear and confusion, when Felicity cannot find her loved one.
She looks at me, then at the two unconscious assassins on the floor and she helps herself up, as I spot the car I'd parked into the shadows.
"You can leave now Ms. Smoak. I have what I came for and I will be on my way back." I tell her.
She nods and shuffles uncomfortably, "I'd tell you goodbye and that I hope to see you soon, but we'd both know that it'll be a lie so I'm going to leave and tell you to be careful because I genuinely mean that."
She leaves then, and I load Fadir and Hamaza into the large black van and drive away.
I'm lost in thought during the ride home. Lost in thought even after I deliver the two assassins to Merlyn and leave them for the comfort of my bed.
I have seen love before. Been privy to the emotion myself. But till this day, I have never seen love like the one Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak share.
The kind of love that never leaves your mind.
Because all Oliver thinks of is Felicity and all Felicity thinks of is Oliver. They can't stop thinking of each other, can't stop talking about each other, can't get the other out of their minds. From the minute I met Felicity Smoak today, all the way till I bid her goodbye, she somehow managed to talk about the Arrow at least 10 times every hour. When she woke up from her unconscious state, the first name to leave her mouth was Oliver's, the same way Felicity's was on his all those years ago.
I suppose I have a marriage to annul.
"You will always be the answer when someone asks me what I'm thinking about,"
Nyssa Al Ghul knows that Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak are what they call soulmates; they can't stop thinking of each other.