– Vantage –

There was a perfect view of the west-setting sun from the rooftop of Starling General Hospital, and by how low it hung in the sky at this point, it could be presumed that there would only be a few more minutes before it disappeared completely. The rooftop afforded a clear view of the sky above, as well as the rest of the war-torn city below. It was the perfect vantage point.

With this bird's-eye view, Felicity could see all of the destruction and havoc Slade's army had unleashed upon Starling City. If she hadn't been so focused on getting all her equipment fired up and tuned into the comms frequency, her mind might have strayed to wonderings about the lost lives of the citizens below her. Felicity was grateful that her set-up gave her something else to concentrate on.

She heard the crunch of two extra sets of feet on the gravel rooftop behind her as Laurel and Sin raced up to her. Felicity was already fully prepared for a lawyer-sized earful when Laurel stepped up behind her, but instead she felt a soft, warm pair of hands on her shoulders. It was only then that Felicity registered the chilly wind brushing against her barely-covered skin.

"Keep doing whatever you have to do," Laurel told her calmly, "but I'm going to put some actual clothes on you before I have to take you back downstairs to be treated for hypothermia."

As impossible as it seemed, while Felicity continued to work on getting everything connected with a little help from Sin ("No, Sin, the green wire, not the yellow one"), Laurel did manage to get her dressed in record time. Felicity finished setting everything up just as Laurel slid Felicity's leather jacket onto her shoulders, and the wind on the rooftop was no longer an issue. Soon all of their eyes were drawn to the little militia of tablet screens set up in front of them on abandoned crates, as images of the burning city flitted in high-definition before their eyes, and the police scanners crackled in between the fearful voices of officers communicating with one another over the radio in the background.

"It's like déjà vu all over again," Felicity muttered to herself, watching the chaos with horrified eyes. She turned on the audio transceiver on her laptop and took a deep breath as she heard a myriad of opposing voices. "Hello? Tech Support to Team Arrow and Co., can anyone hear me?" she asked in a raised voice.

It took a moment before Oliver's voice came over the wire. "Felicity? Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'm fine, thanks," she told him distractedly. "I'm more worried about Starling City at this point." Felicity looked out over the smoldering building and burning streets. "I've gotta say, our city isn't looking so much 'like a star' right now."

There was a pause and then Diggle's voice asked her suspiciously, "Felicity, where are you right now?"

"On the roof," she answered readily.

Digg groaned. "Felicity, the equipment was supposed to go to your room after you woke up, you weren't supposed to go to the roof!"

Felicity almost rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm here now and I'm fine, and we've got bigger issues," she said before everyone on the other end could have a say. "Plus, I can see everything from up here and Laurel and Sin are with me."

"Just don't fall off the edge," Roy's voice told her. She was glad someone still had a sense of humor right now.

"He sounds like he's joking but he's serious, Felicity. Don't fall," Thea added, her voice tainted with worry.

Well, there went that theory.

"Guys, bigger– problems," she reminded them, enunciating each word clearly.

"What do you see, Felicity?" Sara asked her, and Felicity felt a weird pounding in her chest at the sound of the Canary's voice.

Filing that sensation away for later consideration, Felicity stood up from where she had been crouching on the rooftop and she scanned her surroundings and the notable destruction in the city. She could see A.R.G.U.S. vehicles blocking off the bridges in and out of the city in the distance and the blue flashing lights of squad cars parked alongside armored S.W.A.T. trucks surrounding three major areas.

One grouping was larger than the other two and it was on the move. A few dozen yellow-and-black-masked soldiers were traveling like a swarm of locusts, with police vehicles following them with wailing sirens on three sides, but Felicity knew it wasn't enough. She also knew where the soldiers' target was.

"Oliver, are you still at the foundry?" Felicity asked, her voice strained and slightly panicky.

"Yes. Why?" he asked.

She had to remind herself not to panic and to take a breath as she watched the moving militia. "Get out. Now," she told him. "Your best bet is going to be to get to the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. Slade's got a whole brigade of soldiers heading for the foundry. If you can get to higher ground and fire down on them . . ."

"–Then we might be able to thin out the mirakuru soldiers before we have to fight them hand-to-hand on the ground," Oliver finished, catching on to her train of thought. "Felicity, you're a genius," he told her proudly.

Felicity grimaced. "Don't praise me just yet."

Rooftops seemed to be the theme of the evening, Sara mused as she crouched down on the top landing of a fire escape across the street from the vacant Verdant building.

She was, by and far, a much better combatant than she was a marksman. Because of this, she had left the first firing attack to Lyla, Digg, and Deadshot on the roof of their first point. Oliver, Roy, and Thea were hidden in the tower next to it, and beside her was Nyssa and her half-dozen well-trained archers who were covering the third perch. They sat in wait, listening to Felicity give them updates over the comms every few minutes.

"This reminds me of Valletta," Nyssa commented in a low, husky tone.

"Which time?" Sara returned dryly.

"Both of them." Giving Sara a sideways glance, Nyssa smiled slyly and added, "Although, if I remember correctly, our second excursion there was much more enjoyable."

Sara didn't say anything in return, as there wasn't much to say. Of course she remembered Valletta. Their first mission there had been the first time Sara had come within a breath of death since joining the League; afterwards, Nyssa had brought her home to Nanda Parbat and pieced her back together with extreme care. The second time was a little harder to look back on, especially when Felicity's voice echoed through the comms with a little more anxiety than before.

"I hope you guys are ready, because they're turning the corner and coming your way . . right . . . now," the IT girl warned them.

Sure enough, at that moment, the first of the many super soldiers rounded the corner and came into view. Sara pressed the comm in her ear and spoke, "I see them."

"Can you tell how many?" Digg asked over the connection.

Sara felt a sinking feeling in her heart as more and more soldiers continued rounding the city block into view. "Too many," she answered with a half groan. "At least forty– easily."

"And right now, you guys have the advantage– easily," Felicity said, her confidence clear even over a crackling comm. "You've got seven master assassins, four vigilantes, two delta special forces veterans, four very dangerous criminals, and the entire force of the SCPD on your side. I might just be a tech geek watching from a rooftop, but from where I'm standing, it looks like you guys can do this, and I've got a pretty good view where I'm standing."

Sara decided right then and there that she wanted Felicity to always be around to give her pep talks when she was shaky and uncertain, because hearing Felicity put it like that seemed to make the situation seem not quite so hopeless.

"Okay then," Oliver said. "Everyone ready?"

From her vantage point, Sara saw Digg and Lyla look at each other where they were laying on the rooftop with their rifles set up side-by-side. "Ready," Diggle confirmed.

She heard Deadshot chuckle darkly and take the safety off his own rifle. "Ready."

On the point across the street from the A.R.G.U.S. trio, Oliver and his younger 'Arrows' were preparing themselves. Roy stood in his trademark red hoodie sweatshirt and new crimson mask, and Thea was next to him with a yellow hooded cardigan pulled over up over her head and red lipstick painted around her eyes. Both of them nocked arrows to their bowstrings and pulled back at the ready, looking to Oliver for the proverbial green light. "Ready," they said, nearly in unison.

Following Nyssa's lead, the assassins of the League readied their own weapons and prepared to fire. Sara could see clearly from her perch on the fire escape that Nyssa had a look in her eyes like steel. The thought of battle had driven all of the humanity from her visage, leaving only the cold-blooded warrior underneath.

"Ready," she said in a voice like an arctic blast.

Another half-second passed and Sara could tell the exact moment when the first mirakuru soldier stepped into their trap, just as she heard Oliver's final, "Ready, fire!"

The volley of arrows and bullets that streamed down on the mass of soldiers turned out a fair share of them, and Sara could see the army's remaining comrades looking around for the source of the shots, not knowing that the attack came from three separate directions. Sara counted sixteen fallen soldiers before she was distracted by the fact that their adversaries were catching on to their tactics and beginning to make their way toward the fire escapes themselves.

Sara pulled her bō staff from its carrier on her back and stood. "That's my cue," she said, making a move to descend the grated iron stairs.

Before she could even register what was happening, Sara found herself being pulled back from the ledge and held in a strong, single-armed hold. The moment her lips made contact with those of another, Sara recognized what was happening. She recognized the tangy taste and suppleness of the lips molding with hers and all the individual contours of the body pressed flush to her front. Of their own volition, her hands rose to brush fingertips across familiarly smooth cheeks. The world ebbed away for a split second and then snapped harshly back into focus in the next. When the lips broke away from hers, Sara felt like the world seemed somehow sharper than before, rather than hazy as she had come to expect.

Nyssa's dark eyes bored into hers with the final faintest glimmer of emotion left in the assassin. "Be careful, Ta-er al-Sahfer," the raven-haired woman told Sara, before turning back to the battle at hand.

Felicity felt her stomach twist painfully as she listened to the conversations of her friends as they spoke to one another with ragged breaths in between the shots fired and the telltale whoosh of arrows whistling ruthlessly through the air. Despite her rallying words of encouragement, Felicity was perhaps even more afraid than the members of her team who were actually in the middle of the fray. She wished she could be out there with them, watching the scene play out first hand rather than on the grainy, pixilated, black-and-white feed of neighboring security cameras. She kept trying to clear the footage up, but the cameras were out-dated and poorly rigged.

She looked up and met Laurel's eyes over the screens. Almost as soon as the fighting had begun, Laurel had moved to the blind side of the monitors, and Felicity understood without explanation that she did not want to be a helpless spectator in all of this. She too would have preferred to be in the middle of it all, rather than outside the sidelines. There was a sadness and a worry in her pale hazel eyes, but there was also a question that she silently directed to Felicity.

Are you okay? she seemed to want to ask.

"I'm fine," she answered out loud, unintentionally garnering Sin's attention.

Sin was laying on her stomach on the edge of the roof, looking in the direction of the fight through a pair of binoculars. Exactly where, when, and how the teenager had acquired binoculars, Felicity was not sure. Given Sin's rep on the streets, Felicity was fairly certain that she was safer not knowing whether Sin had stolen them from some unsuspecting pedestrian or not.

"Dude, I'm not 'fine'," she said emphatically. "The last thing I ever needed to hear was the sound of Sara macking on some hot assassin chick! Hinky."

"Sin, stay on point, please," Felicity told her, silently agreeing with the younger woman. She would have happily gone through her entire life without needing to hear Sara kissing Nyssa al Ghul as well, if she were being honest. She sighed. "No one's really telling me much about the battle and . . . yup, Slade's men just took out my last good camera on the street. Talk to me, Sin. What's happening?"

"Well . . ." Sin began, peering through the lenses of her binoculars, "Digg's team are a bunch of total beasts. Every time they fire, one of those super-dudes drops. Same with the assassin chick and her guys, but, you know, . . . whatever. I'm Team Felicity anyway."

Felicity picked her head up from trying to regain feed from a camera somewhere to look at the youthful brunette. "Sin, what are you talking about?" she asked suspiciously.

Sin looked over her shoulder at Felicity long enough to stare at the blonde as if she had sprouted a second head. "Team Felicity," she repeated, as if it were obvious and this should have cleared everything up.

Felicity looked to Laurel for some sort of possible explanation, but Laurel held her hands up in front of her as if to say 'don't ask me, I'm not even going there'. Shaking her head to free her mind of that particular conversation, Felicity tried to reign in her impatience and not sound short with Sin. The girl was only eighteen, she was bound to make no sense sometimes, Felicity surmised.

"Sin, focus. Before I take those binoculars from you so I can keep track myself," she threatened in what she hoped was a playful manner.

"Okay, okay, sheesh," Sin grumbled. "Um . . . the mirakuru guys are thinning out pretty heavily now. Ollie just shot three arrows at once and all but one of them hit a soldier. Sara just jumped down off a fire escape and took down two more. Whoa! That one was close! HEY, WATCH IT, ABERCROMBIE!"

"WHAT?!" Laurel and Felicity exclaimed in unison.

"Oh. Roy almost hit Sara while she was dodging one of the soldier's fists but it missed her and . . . now the soldier's down. That 'Twerk' guy stabbed him in the neck with a syringe or something."

"Torque," Felicity corrected.

"What?" Sin asked distractedly.

"Dudley Soames, he calls himself 'Torque', not 'Twerk'," Laurel explained to the girl.

"I don't care if he calls himself 'Tootles', he just saved our girl," Sin told them. She looked back through her binoculars and suddenly screamed, "OH SHIT!"

"FELICITY!" Oliver yelled unexpectedly through the comms at that same moment. "Where are my eyes?!"

"I don't have any!" Felicity answered him desperately. "They took out every accessible camera within sight!" She looked at the girl watching through the binoculars and asked, "SIN! What just happened?"

Roy was not ashamed to admit that he screamed like a newborn baby when he felt something sharp enter his back and cut straight through his torso unexpectedly. He dropped to his knees and, distantly it seemed, he could hear someone else (Thea, he thought) scream too. Oliver's startled shout of, "Roy!" somehow made it through his hazy mind clearer.

Thea jumped over Roy's fallen body and stood defensively between her boyfriend and the crazy-eyed female Slade-look-alike. Beyond the mask, she knew who this woman was, but it wasn't until Oliver yelled a name that she put the identity of this woman together.

"Isabel!"

Anger seethed out of Thea in waves. Isabel Rochev, the woman who had taken her family's livelihood, and now Thea knew that she had had a hand in her mother's death and Roy's mirakuru-injection as well. She knew Ollie's stance on killing, but she seriously considered the consequences of putting an arrow through the gaping black hole that surely existed where Isabel Rochev's frigid heart should have been. This woman had taken everything from Thea; her boyfriend, her mother, her club, her life. Why shouldn't she return the favor?

Because it's not who you are, Thea.

She remembered back to the day she was set to leave Starling City, when all of this began. Her bags were packed, her train ticket was booked, and her cab had been called. Then Felicity Smoak, of all people, had burst through the Queen Mansion doors and turned her world upside-down and set it straight all with one sentence.

. . .

"You can't leave Starling City," Felicity had all but yelled at her. The wild look in her eye and the desperate plea in her voice were the only things that kept Thea from ignoring her completely. She knew that tone; it was the one she used while pleading with Ollie to tell her the truth, to talk to her, to talk to somebody.

"Why not?" she had demanded petulantly in spite of knowing all that.

Felicity had hesitated for all of half a second, but when Thea rolled her eyes and reached for her suitcase handle, it was as if the words exploded unbidden from Felicity's mouth, "Because Oliver is The Arrow and he's about to hand himself over to the same man who murdered your mother and he NEEDS you, Thea!"

Remembering back on it, Thea would always say that that was the moment that her world stopped and then started spinning backwards. Oliver as the vigilante? He had been acting weird since he came home, but had he really been acting that weird? She had known the answer almost as soon as the question had filtered into her mind. Yes. It made no sense, and yet it made all the sense in the world.

"What could he possibly need me for?" Thea had asked with self-deprecation. "All I am is the daughter of two mass murderers. Why do you think I can help him? If my brother is the hero, then doesn't that make me the product of the villains?"

Felicity had stepped up to her, placed both hands on Thea's shoulders, and met her eyes with steady determination and genuine understanding. "Because that's not who you are, Thea," Felicity had told her. Thea had tried to look away but Felicity had caught her gaze once again. "Listen to me. You can't change who or where you came from, believe me, but you are the only person who gets to decide who you are and where you go from here. It's your choice. It's your decision, Thea. We aren't defined by who gave us life, we're defined by who we choose to be in the life we're given." Felicity's eyes had been so blue and so honest as she told Thea, "If you want to be a hero, Thea, then be a hero. No one else gets to tell you can't be. Not your mother, not your father, not your brother. Just you." Felicity paused and smiled at her, squeezing her shoulders in encouragement. "So stay. Stay and be a hero, if that's what you want. You've got my vote of confidence. You're a good person, Thea. Evil isn't inherited, it's a choice. I know you're a good person. You'll make the right choice."

. . .

"I've lost a lot because of you," Thea told the woman. "I could kill you where you're standing and I wouldn't shed a tear or lose a second of sleep over it."

"Big talk for a little girl," Isabel taunted her with a smug smirk that Thea had every intention of slapping off in a second.

"People aren't born evil, it's a choice you make," Thea told her. She nocked another arrow and raised her bow, pointing the arrowhead at Isabel. "You chose wrong."

Isabel scoffed. "You think I'm evil?"

Thea chuckled darkly. "No, I think you're a delusional, cold-hearted bitch," she stated frankly, "but that's beside the point." She leveled her shot.

"Speedy," Oliver said to her in a low warning voice.

"Isabel Rochev, you have failed this city and everyone in it," Thea told her. "You chose wrong." She let go of the arrow and let it fly.

"THEA!" Oliver screamed at her as he watched the arrow embed itself into Isabel's chest. Then he caught sight of the tip. It was an injection arrow, filled with the mirakuru cure.

For a split second, Oliver felt his heart grow lighter, knowing that his sister had not been shooting to kill, but then he watched as Isabel stumbled back from the force of the hit. She took three staggering backwards steps and then her heel caught the edge of the open rooftop. As if everything had slowed down, he watched Isabel grope senselessly as she toppled over the edge of the brick building and fell. He stared for several seconds at the edge where the CEO had been only seconds ago, certain that she would somehow crawl up the side of the building like a spider. Several seconds passed and there was still only empty air.

"Ollie!" he heard Thea cry, and he whipped back around to tell Thea it wasn't her fault, only to find his sister leaning over her bleeding boyfriend. Oliver rushed over just as Thea was quickly descending into hysterics. "She stabbed him! She stabbed him! Oh God, Ollie, she ran him through with her sword! He's bleeding! There's so much blood!"

"OLIVER! What's happening?" Felicity's voice was asking in Oliver's ear comm.

"Roy's been hurt. Isabel ran him through," he explained, turning the audio of the comm on auto so he wouldn't have to press the comm for her to hear him every time he spoke. "He's lost a lot of blood already."

Felicity stood up abruptly, drawing the eyes of Laurel and Sin to her once again. She had a wild look in her eyes and her face was red from screaming at Oliver and Thea. There was no way she could do this from her safe little nest atop a hospital full of medical staff, especially now that Roy was hurt and she had a way to save him.

"Is there anything left of the hyper-healing agent?" Felicity demanded, already shifting through her bag for a USB cord.

"Sure, the geeks at S.T.A.R. Labs made a few extra vials, just in case," Sin answered. She reached inside her inner jacket pocket and drew one out, "But I have them all with us here. Why?"

Plugging her phone into her laptop and starting up a sync, Felicity answered, "Because without the mirakuru in his system, Roy won't heal from an injury like that fast enough to survive on his own. He needs the healing agent. Now." Her phone beeped positively, letting her know that the sync was complete, and she disconnected her cell from her laptop and stuck the phone in her pocket. She plucked the vial from Sin's grasp and continued, "Which is why I need to get this to him."

"Felicity, they're all the way across town! And how do you plan on leaving the hospital?" Laurel questioned, following Felicity toward the stairs access.

"I was thinking I'd just walk out the door," Felicity answered. "The hospital is over capacity and under-staffed. No one is going to miss me."

Laurel finally managed to grab hold of Felicity's arm and pull her to a stop. "You can't go out there alone. It's too dangerous," she said firmly, hoping that this would put an end to Felicity's delusions.

"That's why you're coming with me and we're calling your father," Felicity supplied rationally.

"Well, if the two of you are gone, who's going to man the systems here?" Sin asked.

Felicity put both hands on Sin's shoulders. "You are," she answered. "I've already synced my phone to the laptop, and the cameras are all down anyway, so there's really nothing we can do about that. If we need anything else then I can talk you through the process. Other than that, this is probably the safest building in the entire city right now, you'll be okay here."

Both of the other two women stared at her for a long moment, and then Laurel finally groaned in defeat.

"Sometimes I love that you can figure everything out in a heartbeat, Felicity, and other times I really, really don't," Laurel told her. "Sin?"

The youngest of them kicked a stone across the rooftop and reluctantly relented, "Yeah, okay. Fine. I guess if it's for Roy then I can roll with it, but I'm totally kicking his ass once he's all healed up. I told him to watch his back, not get himself stabbed through it!"

Felicity beamed and grabbed Sin's chin. "Oh, Sin, I'm totally keeping you around just for your comedic relief in dire situations," she told the young girl, pulling her in and planting a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Just go before I change my mind and start freaking out," Sin ordered them.

"Oliver, how bad is Roy?" Diggle asked, covering Lyla's head as the soldiers' reinforcements showed up with fire power and began directing it at them.

Meanwhile, across the street on the opposite rooftop, Oliver and Thea were dragging Roy into the rooftop stairwell for cover. Once grenades had started being thrown their way, they had decided it might be a good idea to move Roy to a safer location, but the blood trail that they left behind as they dragged him was enough to turn both their stomachs. Thea had only just stopped freaking out.

"Still bleeding. God, I don't even have anything to staunch the flow," Oliver answered, his tone fraught with stress.

"Ollie, I'm trying to get to you guys but I'm having to fight my way through and these guys just keep popping up," Sara informed him.

She was trying to force her way through every small opening she could find in the army's ranks. It felt like for every foot she gained, she lost ten yards. She felt someone nudge her back and she was just about to turn and put a syringe in their neck when they spoke to her.

"I'm covering you," Nyssa assured her, firing two more arrows in quick succession into a duo of soldiers. "Go. Save your friend. I'm right behind you, my men can cover our post."

Somehow, with Nyssa staying true to her word and covering her, Sara finally made it to the old warehouse where Oliver, Thea, and Roy had put up a firing outlook. Once they were inside, Sara began tearing into crates in search of supplies. She found a crate of cotton t-shirts, a bottle of gin, and duct tape, which wasn't very satisfactory but was better than nothing.

They ran up all six flights of stairs and finally found Roy, Oliver, and Thea in the stairwell that opened out onto the roof. Roy looked paler than Sara could ever remember seeing him and she could see how much blood he had lost just in the time since he had been moved to the stairwell. He was conscious, but just barely, and sweating like a sauna.

"Jeez, Roy," she scolded him lightly, crouching down and examining the damage, "if I didn't know you better I would think you had a death wish."

Roy tried to laugh but it came out as more of a cough and he hissed at the pain it caused him. "Always in the wrong place at the wrong time," he returned weakly.

Sara craned her neck and pushed aside what was left of Roy's signature red hoodie to get a better look. "The good news is, it was through and through. No major organs were harmed in the making of this catastrophe," she joked. "The bad news is, you've lost a lot of blood, so that blade had to have nicked something going through, but I can't tell where the bleeder is just from looking at it."

"Do what you have to do," Roy told her trustingly.

Sara winced. "I would have to cut you open even more do to that," she said.

"Do it," he said.

"DON'T DO IT!" Felicity screamed over the comms. "Laurel and I are on our way with the healing serum. Do not go getting McGuyver on me, Lance!"

Felicity and Laurel were almost out of the hospital and home-free. They had just stepped out the doors and were looking around for Detective Lance's cruiser when Felicity met the eyes of someone else familiar. Her stared back at her in disbelief and she knew they were so busted.

"Miss Smoak?" Dr. Hamilton asked, eyes wide in suspicion as he eyed her upright state. "That's impossible," he said breathlessly. "You were . . . and now you're . . ."

"Doctor, I would love to stand here with you and explain to you all the reasons why this is possible, but I don't have that kind of time right now. My friend is hurt and he needs to be given the same thing that healed me," Felicity explained.

"I can't just let you leave," Dr. Hamilton argued. "Your condition was . . ."

"–And now my condition isn't," Felicity interjected. "Please, sir, you have to understand. My friend is a hero, and a lot more innocent people are going to die if I don't get this to him." Felicity held up the vial of hyper-healing serum.

Dr. Hamilton looked at her with distrust. "And that . . . that" – he pointed to the vial – "will heal your friend as quickly as it healed you?" he asked with caution. His eyes met Felicity's, "What is it you're into, Miss Smoak?"

In the distance, blue lights flashed and sirens wailed. Laurel grabbed Felicity's elbow and began dragging her toward the squad car that appeared with Det. Lance at the wheel. "Don't say anything else," Laurel advised her like any good lawyer would.

"Wait!" Dr. Hamilton called after them, jogging to keep up. The women and turned back to the doctor. "Let me come with you," Hamilton said. "If your friend's condition is anywhere near as dire as yours was, Miss Smoak, he'll need more than a miracle healing drug. I can help you."

Felicity looked to Laurel for her opinion just as Quentin pulled to a stop in front of them and yelled, "Get in! Quick!"

Both girls' eyes went from the doctor, to one another, and back again.

It was finally Felicity who said, "What you see tonight, you can never tell anyone about. If you do, I can promise you that your bank accounts will be cleared out into nonrefundable charitable donations and your credit score will plummet so severely that you will be living in a cardboard box next to Ernie the Friendly Hobo for the next five years. Do we have an understanding?"

The doctor nodded his head, looking like he knew Felicity meant every word.

"Then get in if you're coming, Dr. Hamilton," Laurel told him.

The doctor climbed into the police cruiser in the passenger seat next to Quentin. He greeted the policeman and then turned back to Laurel and Felicity. "Since we're all becoming so close, I guess you can call me by my first name," he offered. "It's Emil."

"Well then welcome aboard the crazy train, Dr. Emil Hamilton," Det. Lance told him wryly.

"Felicity, are– you– insane?" Oliver demanded in a quiet hiss, checking over his shoulder every few seconds in the direction of the doctor who was fixing up their friend. "The list of people who know our secret is already a mile long, and you want to add a complete stranger to that list?"

"In her defense," Laurel began, holding up a hand to silence Oliver's next onslaught of anxious chastisements, "he did see her upright and running back into danger not a week after he practically brought her back from the dead during surgery, and she's not much of a liar. Making up a justification for this" – Laurel gestured to Felicity's almost-completely healed body – "on the spot is pretty hard to do. Even I was at a loss as to how to rationalize this."

"Plus, now we have an M.d. to add to our list of non-vigilante assets," Felicity added. "Detective, lawyer, government agent, doctor . . . see where I'm going with this?"

Oliver looked back and forth between the two women while opening and closing his mouth several times, until the building shook suddenly with the force of yet another explosion outside the stairwell. The light flickered briefly and everyone looked up and around with worry. Oliver threw another glance at Dr. Hamilton before switching back to Laurel and Felicity. Then he caught sight of Thea standing over Roy's prone body and his resolve softened a little at the look on his sister's face as the doctor injected Roy with the healing serum.

"Ollie," Sara broke through his reverie with a tired sigh, "they did the right thing, okay? There's no way I could have fixed Roy on my own with what I had. I was taught biochemistry, not medicine. They probably saved his life. Isn't that worth one more person knowing the truth about all this?"

The two heroes stared at each other for several long moments, neither of them willing to be the first to give up ground.

"If it helps," Hamilton interrupted after awhile, still working on disinfecting Roy's wound, "I am, by law of course, bound to doctor-patient confidentiality. I would say that this applies, Mr. Queen. Besides, I rather like my credit score as it is."

Oliver cut his eyes to Felicity, who shrugged.

"I gave him stipulations for coming with us," she said indignantly. "Ye of little faith, Oliver. It's like you don't even know me."

Whatever was left of Oliver's resolution finally gave out, and it was visible in his posture as he turned to Dr. Hamilton. "I realize that this is probably a lot to take in, doctor," he began, but Hamilton spoke before he could say more.

"Mr. Queen, I worked for S.T.A.R. Labs for years, there's little that surprises me anymore," he admitted, as if this weren't necessarily a good thing. "Although, seeing Ms. Smoak as she is now compared to this morning, I have to admit that that did catch me off-guard."

Oliver sent Felicity a look. "She has that effect on people," he muttered, before turning away and asking Diggle for an update over the comms.

Sara moved closer to Felicity and gently poked her in the ribs experimentally. Felicity moved away from the contact, but, from the smile on her face, Sara could say with confidence that it wasn't out of pain. Satisfied that Felicity was in better shape, she simply stood close with her friend, their shoulders resting against one another as they sort of leaned into each other.

"How are you feeling?" Sara asked, just to be sure.

"Tired," Felicity answered honestly. "And a little weak, to be honest. Nothing that can't be fixed with an order of beef chow fun, a bubble bath, and twelve hours of sleep after all of this is over."

"Hey, I'll bring the food and my Rockets jammies and we'll recuperate together after all of this is over," Sara told her, leaning in a little more without putting too much weight against Felicity.

Felicity smiled and exhaled a soft laugh. "It's a date." As per usual, it was only once the words were out of her mouth that Felicity realized the implications of her words, and she tried to backpedal, spinning her wheels as she did so. "I mean . . . uh, not a 'date' date– Not that that's not–! What I meant was–"

"Felicity?" Oliver called.

It was spoken under her breath, but Sara still heard Felicity's, "Oh, thank you, God," before she quickly turned to Oliver and asked in a much more audible voice, "Yes, sir? I mean, Ollie– Oliver. Yes, Oliver?"

Oliver gave her an odd look. "Are you okay, Felicity?" he asked.

"Yea– Ha, um. Yes," she answered, still flustered from her own faux pas. She cleared her throat. "I'm fine," she clarified more confidently. "What was it you needed?"

Oliver looked a little impatient with her inattention. "Can you and Laurel take Dr. Hamilton and Roy back to the secondary lair?" he asked. "Diggle said that the number of mirakuru soldiers in thinning out here, but Sin says that the police scanners have been going off about sightings of them in other locations around the city." He spoke slowly to her, keeping his eyes fixed on hers to make sure she focused and understood what he was asking of her and why.

"Should we get Sin off the hospital roof?" she asked.

Oliver smirked. "I don't know. It sounds like she's having fun playing Team Arrow's spotter from the safety of her outlook post," he said. "Plus, it's a major help having her looking out up there. Maybe we should leave her for now."

Felicity smiled and nodded, but the smile quickly faded as another thought wrapped itself around her brain. She reached down and squeezed Sara's hand before taking Oliver by the elbow and leading him to a more secluded area of their makeshift bunker. He gave her a worried look.

"What's wrong? You're wearing your 'something's off' expression," he commented.

"Something is off," Felicity said. "Oliver, you've been fighting for . . how long now? Two– three hours? We haven't seen any sign of Slade Wilson. That worries me. I hate to sound negative but none of this means anything if we can't get to Slade."

"I know that," Oliver agreed, "but if we can revert his monsters back into men then that eliminates the immediate threat to Starling City. After that, this becomes less of a defense and more of an offense. We'll find him, or he'll find us. That's one thing we can count on."

Felicity nodded, accepting that whatever words Oliver had to offer right now, they were not the ones that would alleviate the melancholic pressure and pain in her heart and in her chest. She glanced across the stairwell corridor to find Sara watching them warily and wondered if Sara could feel this pressure too, or if it were only her. Either way, she knew that it wasn't going away any time soon.

She made a move to help Laurel and Dr. Hamilton move Roy, but she was stopped by Oliver's hand on her arm. She looked up to meet his eyes.

"Thank you, Felicity. You've done more in the last few days than I ever could have asked of you, and you've held onto yourself while you've done it. You're the strongest person I know," he told her.

Felicity shook her head. "All I've done is what's necessary of me," she answered humbly. With a smirk, she added, "I've just done it really well."

Oliver smiled. "You always do."

With that, Oliver moved past her and made his way up the stairs and slipped out the door. Nyssa al Ghul, Felicity noticed, followed suit but not before pausing on the stop step and looking over her shoulder at Sara expectantly. Sara nodded for her to go on and the assassin seemed to concede after a moment of hesitation. Sara turned back to Felicity, whose eyes were still on the door Nyssa had exited out of.

"Do you remember what I asked of you?" Felicity asked her. "When you told me to keep fighting, when we were talking about the effects of the healing serum?"

Sara nodded, looking at Felicity with concerned eyes. "You asked me not to leave without saying goodbye," she remembered aloud.

Felicity nodded. "Forget about that, okay? Just . . . instead, promise me that you'll do what makes you happy? Only what makes you happy. It doesn't matter whether you stay or go, as long as you do it for you, then I– we will all know that you're happy, Sara. If that's not enough, then I don't know what will be."

Sara could see the look in Felicity's eyes, the defeat and the loss and the acceptance of both, but, as for Sara herself, she was in shock. No one had ever simply told her to do what made her happy, and even if they had, they certainly hadn't meant it as genuinely as Felicity so obviously did. Sara took Felicity's hands and she knew she was doing the right thing.

"Listen to me, okay? Even if I have to leave for awhile, I will always find my way back home. That is what I will promise you," Sara told her. "But I'm not going anywhere right away. This is my home, here, with all of you. This is where I belong, and this is where I'm going to make my stand. Anywhere else I go? That's just a detour on my way back. Being here is what makes me happy."

Felicity smiled and briefly touched Sara's cheek. "Good, because I can't really picture you anywhere else," she said. More solemnly, she added, "Be careful out there. Dying is not an option, got it?"

Sara laughed. "Yes ma'am," she replied dutifully. Slowly she leaned in and kissed Felicity's cheek. "You be careful too."