A/N: I just want to thank everyone so much for all the support and encouragement and constructive criticism! You have all been so great! On a sidenote: I realized that Sara's League name is actually Ta-er al-Asfer, not Sahfer, so I will be changing that. Anyway, onto the story!
–Heart–
The cool night air blowing against the sheen of sweat on Sara's exposed skin was the only thing keeping her core temperature down as she dodged and blocked and parried and stabbed her way through the melee of mirakuru soldiers. She ducked as one of the soldiers dove toward her, causing him to sail over her back and tumble onto the ground on the other side of her. Sara spun, grabbed one of the arrows from the quiver of the nearest archer, and turned back around just in time to stab the attacker in the neck.
She heard a war cry come from somewhere and she turned toward the source of the noise to find yet another soldier taking a run at her. From the speed at which he was crossing the distance between them, Sara knew she wasn't going to be able to fend him off without sustaining injury herself. She raised her forearm in a reflexive instinct to defend herself, but the soldier crashed into her arm-first, knocking her to the ground just as she registered a resounding crack. It was another moment before the shock wore off and she was able to feel the searing pain in her wrist, but she cried out when she did.
The soldier was crouched down over her, about to deliver the final blow, when an arrow cut through the air and punctured the dead-center of his chest. He fell to the ground unconscious a moment later, and Sara rolled onto her stomach to see who had saved her. Nyssa stood for a moment, still holding her bow aloft, as a look of satisfaction crossed the visible part of her face.
By chance, Sara happened to see a figure looming over Nyssa's shoulder, and she tried to cry out in warning, "Nyssa!", but the soldier was already too close. He grabbed Nyssa from behind and held his sword to her neck. Just as he was about to draw his blade across her throat and take Nyssa's life before Sara's very eyes, the soldiers entire body locked up and he crumpled to the ground with another arrow between his shoulder blades.
Nyssa touched her throat protectively and turned around. She said nothing when she found Quentin Lance standing behind her looking down at the soldier's unmoving body, but when he looked back up to her, she nodded in a sign of respectful thanks. He simply responded in kind, before rushing over to Sara.
"Honey, you okay?" he asked her with his typical tone of fatherly concern.
"Yeah, Dad, I'm fine," Sara lied in answer, turning over again.
The detective tried to grab her hand to help her up, but she hissed in pain and drew away when he touched her injured hand. It wasn't painful enough to be a break but she knew from experience that it wasn't dislocated either. She tried to remember when it had begun hurting, if it was before or after she hit the ground. If she injured it when she fell, it might just be a sprain. If she had injured it when Slade's goon had hit her, it was more likely fractured.
"Your hand," Nyssa commented as she came closer.
For a moment, Sara wondered why their poorly-guarded group of three wasn't being attacked by more combatants, until she looked around. All she could see for a solid city block was a sea of unconscious soldiers. The only people left standing were Nyssa, Quentin, six heavily breathing League assassins, and Oliver. The sudden silence was deafening and the calmness in the air felt foreign now.
"Ninth Street and Harbor Drive are clear," Oliver – as The Arrow – said over the comms as he made his way over to their group.
They heard a shot fired on the other end of the connection at the same time that they heard it echo off the surrounding buildings. "Ditto on Bridgeton Ave," Diggle answered from his end. "How's everyone on your end?"
The Arrow arrived and crouched down next to Sara. He slipped an arm around her waist from her uninjured side and helped her to her feet. "Sara's been injured," he answered.
Sara tapped on the audio on her comm. "It's just a sprain. I'm fine" – she glared at Oliver pointedly for his overreaction – "really," she assured them. "So where to next, Sin?"
From her lookout perch atop the hospital building, Sin scanned the city through her binoculars before answering. "It's up to you, I guess," she replied. "The only soldiers I see left are loners and the SCPD's doing a pretty good job rounding them up and finishing them off– figuratively, I mean."
Oliver, Sara, Nyssa, and Lance stood in a circle, the other assassins hanging back dutifully. They looked at each other.
"We should go back to the lair and regroup," Oliver suggested. "We still need to find Slade and end this for good."
"What are you gonna do?" Sara asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Oliver was silent for a moment. "Whatever it takes," he answered, before turning away and pressing his comm again. "Sin, we're going to meet up back at the lair, okay?"
"I'll go and get her at the hospital," Lance offered. "I don't like the idea of her trying to make her way back by herself. She's just a kid."
"I'm eighteen," Sin interjected, "but if it means I get a free ride in a police cruiser without doing hard time, then I'll roll with it."
Sara rolled her eyes at Sin's spunky response and hugged her father as he left to retrieve their youngest member. "He's on his way," she told Sin. Then she added, "Felicity, how's everyone on your end?"
They were met with complete silence.
"Felicity?" Still no response. "Thea?" More silence. "Roy?" Oliver asked a little more worriedly. He exchanged glances with Sara.
"Maybe they took their ear pieces out. I'll try Felicity's cell," Sara said, grabbing her phone from her inside jacket pocket and pressing Felicity's button on her speed dial.
It rang.
And rang . .
And rang . . .
And rang . . . .
And then, "Hey, you've reached Felicity Smoak. Leave a message."
Sara lowered her phone from her ear, her eyes never leaving Oliver's gaze. "Something's wrong, Ollie."
Just as she said this, Oliver's phone began ringing and he quickly answered it. "Yeah."
"I hear you're looking for me," Slade's voice came through the line. "I suggest you look harder, kid, and I would do it quickly if I were you."
"What's the rush?" Oliver demanded.
"I have something of yours. Someone of yours. I must say, that photo didn't do her any justice," Slade answered slyly. "See you soon, kid."
Felicity groaned and coughed as she came to and tried to take a breath, only to suck in dust and stale air. She pushed herself to her hands and knees and peered at her surroundings through the cracked lenses of her glasses.
The lights had clearly fallen when the ceiling had collapsed, only to be held from crushing them by a single support beam in the middle of the room that had miraculously been left standing. Glass was shattered across the floor and sparks flew from a few still-flickering lightbulbs. Furniture and equipment was broken, dust was clouding the air, and debris had completely covered most of the area.
Felicity dropped her head and closed her eyes, trying to clear the fog from her mind and remember what had happened here. She remembered telling Sara to be careful. She remembered Thea requesting to go back to the lair with Felicity, Laurel, Dr. Hamilton, and the injured Roy, citing that she could protect them while the others went on to take care of the remaining mirakuru soldiers. She remembered coming back to the lair, and then . . .
. . .
Hamilton had taken Roy to a curtained off section of the room that they had hurriedly did their best to sterilize and then Felicity had set up shop at her panel of computer screens. She had brought up a map of the city's grid and activated the team's tracking devices to locate precisely where they were in Starling City at the moment. She had color-coded their pinpoints, and she could see that Oliver's green point was with Sara's yellow, slowly moving southward to where Ninth Street met Harbor Drive. Digg and Lyla's respective navy and indigo points were covering ground across Bridgeton Avenue. Her own light blue dot was at rest right next to Roy's red one.
"Will I get a cool colored dot on the map?" Laurel asked from over her shoulder.
"Hey, if she gets one, then so do I," Thea added. "Can I be gold?"
"It's just to keep track of them," Felicity explained. "It looks like everyone is safe. Well, our people are clearly safe. I didn't dare put homing devices on the League assassins, I'm pretty sure not a single one of them would waste the chance to kill me."
Laurel looked at the map and smiled faintly at Felicity's comment. "I don't blame you, but what about Sin? She's not on here either," she pointed out.
"I'll call her," Thea offered, already taking out her phone and dialing the familiar number.
"Oh, I wouldn't bother."
Felicity whipped her head around in the direction of the entrance to find Slade Wilson walking down the stairs dressed for combat. Without even a second thought, she grabbed an aluminum injection arrow off Oliver's workbench beside her and gripped it tightly in her hand behind her back. She stared daggers at the man who had spent hours on end torturing her with unremorseful cruelty.
"I have it on good authority that your friend atop the hospital building is perfectly well," Slade finished conversationally.
Thea let the phone drop from her ear. "If you hurt her–"
"You'll what?" Slade pouted mockingly. "Are you going to kill me, Miss Queen? Or should I call you Miss Merlyn?" He laughed at the anger that flared in Thea's eyes. "I have no intentions of hurting your friend. Why would I . . . when the person I'm truly after is in this room?"
"Oliver's not here," Felicity spoke up, trying to draw Slade's attention away from Thea. "He's still out fighting your goons, but you're not welcome to wait."
As predicted, Slade turned on Felicity. "You are quite lively for a dead woman, Miss Smoak," he remarked. "I see your wit has not been diminished by your recent rise from the dead."
"Nope, but I'm whole lot more pissed off than I was before," Felicity shot back angrily. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I guess I have you to thank for that."
"Why don't you and I just let bygones be bygones?" Slade suggested. "After all, everything I'm after is right here!"
In the blink of an eye, Slade had surged forward and grabbed Laurel, who shrieked and tried to break free of his ironclad grasp as she was pulled into Slade's chest. Thea had grabbed her bow off the table and nocked an arrow which was now aimed for Slade's head, but it was a sharpened point, meant to cut through flesh and bone. If she fired it, it would kill Slade. Laurel was fighting so hard to escape Slade's hold, but with the mirakuru still pumping confidently through his veins, she didn't stand a chance.
Felicity held her hand out to stop him. "Wait," she begged. She took a few hesitant steps toward the man who held her friend. "Oliver says that the two of you were friends once, that you cared about him." Felicity forced herself to meet the eyes of the man who had every intention of killing everyone she loved as she continued to close the distance between them. "Well I think that you still do. Deep, deep down. Way deep down. Slade, this drug – the mirakuru – it makes you crazy. I've seen how it can warp a person's mind, and that was just after they had lived with it for a few months. I can't imagine what this stuff could do to a man's mind after five years, but we have the cure. This doesn't have to end badly."
Slade looked down on her condescendingly. "I'm afraid it does," he answered.
Felicity nodded. "I guess I should have expected as much," she sighed. "Badly it is then."
She pulled the arrow from behind her back and took the remaining steps between them at a run. Felicity raised the arrow with every intention of driving it into Slade, but at the last possible second, Slade tossed Laurel aside like a rag doll and caught Felicity as she launched herself at him arrow-first. His fist closed around Felicity's throat in a familiar turn of events.
"Dying has made you braver, I see," Slade said to her as he raised her to eye level. "What a shame it will be to have to bury you."
With those words spoken, Slade threw Felicity off to the side and took off, leaving behind a rapidly beeping detonation device. Thea tried to run after Slade, and Felicity hadn't even had time to warn her before the device exploded and the whole world had gone dark.
. . .
Felicity coughed again, choking on the thick air that lingered in the ruins of Oliver's second lair. "Thea?" she croaked, her voice rough from the rubble she had inhaled. "Laurel? Roy?!" she called a little louder, pushing herself to her feet and ducking her head to avoid the low ceiling which groaned ominously.
She looked around the room carefully. Her heart soared with relief when she spotted a red street shoe poking out from a pile of broken drywall and splintered moulding. She heard a masculine cough, followed by a wheezing intake of breath and a "what the hell?".
"Roy?" Felicity called. "Roy?!" Felicity staggered over to the mass of fallen materials and began pulling the cracked sheets of chalky drywall away, until she could finally see Roy's dirt-smudged face. "Roy," she sighed reassuredly. Felicity grabbed his hand and began pulling him up.
Once he was on his feet, Roy attempted to dust himself off futilely. "What happened?" he asked, now much more alert.
"Slade Wilson," Felicity answered. "He found us after we brought you back here to heal. Oh yeah! You were also run through by a sword, so . . . there's that too . . ."
"I remember . . . kind of," Roy said. His back suddenly snapped ramrod straight as they heard the sound of choking coming from somewhere close by. Roy looked back to Felicity and said, "Thea."
"Here," Thea's voice rasped, followed by a shift in the layer of debris to Felicity's right.
Both Roy and Felicity rushed over to her, each taking one of her arms and helping her stand up. She looked to be, by far, the worst off out of the three. Bruises were forming and swelling along the right side of her forehead where she also had a nasty cut that had already bled quite a bit. She had a scrape across her left cheekbone and another on her chin. There was a trail of blood running from her nose and a cut that ran vertically through both her lips. Felicity wondered just how close Thea been to the explosion that had nearly brought down the lair on top of them.
"Are you alright?" she asked Thea, trying to dust some of the broken drywall from her light-brown hair and push it away from her battered face.
Thea coughed again. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay," she answered. "Just a little dizzy . . ." her words tapered off as she looked around the room. "Where are Laurel and Dr. Hamilton?"
Behind them, from somewhere near where the windows used to be, came the doctor's wheeze of, "I'm okay." Arms suddenly popped up out of the rubble, and the doctor pushed himself up. He straightened his remarkably undamaged spectacles and fixed his clothes which had been torn and ripped in places. "Nothing seems to be broken."
Thea's whole body tensed and she spun around in a frantic circle. "Laurel," she said. "Where's Laurel?"
Felicity too became panicked. "Laurel!" she yelled. The building groaned again and this time it shifted, dropping the ceiling a little lower than before. "Laurel!"
Hamilton looked around the structure. "This whole building is going to come down any second," he told them. "We need to get out of here."
"We can't leave without Laurel!" Felicity told him. "We're Team Arrow. No man – or woman – gets left behind."
The only response that came to Felicity's statement was the sound of a phone going off. As it rang, Roy, Thea, and Emil looked around the space, but Felicity just sighed. She took her phone out of her pocket, holding it up to show them before answering it.
"Oliver," she said, without even needing to look at the caller ID.
"Felicity, where– are– you?" he asked in his emphatic and grave tone of voice.
"Slade was here. He ambushed the lair. Again," she added wryly.
"Is everyone alright?"
"Roy, Dr. Hamilton, and I are fine. Thea's a little banged up and dizzy but she says she's okay. But Oliver, we don't know where Laurel is," Felicity explained, her voice cracking under the weight of trying to maintain composure in the face of her panic.
"I do," Oliver told her. "Slade has her."
An unwanted sob managed to slip past Felicity's lips despite her best defenses. "Oliver, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's my fault. I tried to stop him, I did. He was just so strong, and I couldn't," she cried.
"Felicity, listen to me: this isn't your fault," Oliver told her firmly. "We're outside the lair now, but the entrance is buried. We're trying to create a big enough opening for you to slip through."
"Oka–" Felicity stopped abruptly. Her gaze was caught by a small metallic object laying on the ground not too far away. She walked over and stooped to retrieve it, sniffling all the while. "Oliver, did you have explosive fletchettes in here?"
"Yeah," he answered, sounding like he was lifting something heavy. "Why?"
She looked over her shoulder at Roy, Thea, and Emil. One corner of Roy's mouth quirked up in a smile and he nodded to her. He held his hand out and Felicity gave him the miniature arrow.
"Oliver, stand back," she told him.
"Why?"
As Roy wound his arm back like an MLB pitcher, Felicity answered, "Because we're coming out."
Roy launched the mini arrow straight at the wall of broken concrete pieces and a second later the fletchette exploded. The impact was minimal, not enough to bring the rest of the building down, but enough to make a hole to slip through. Not a second after the dust had settled did Oliver's head appear in the frame of remaining rocks.
He looked at Roy. "Nice shot."
Roy stared wide-eyed at the gap between the fallen concrete as if he couldn't believe that he had created their way out. "Thanks."
Felicity took Thea's arm and led her over to the gap. "Thea goes first," she said.
As Thea stumbled toward the narrow gap, Oliver held his arms out to her. "I've got you, Speedy," he assured her.
"Be careful," Felicity warned as Oliver pulled Thea through the tight space by her hands. "Careful."
Once Thea made it through and was safe in the arms of her worried brother, the rest of them followed her out; Hamilton, Felicity, and then finally Roy, who Felicity turned to pull through once she was out of the destroyed lair. When they were finally all safe and clear of the building, Hamilton saw to the injured Thea and, after squeezing Felicity's hand in thanks, Roy followed to watch over them. Felicity took note of the lightening sky just before Sara rushed over to her with her arms outstretched. She opened her arms and Sara unexpectedly stepped into them and wrapped Felicity in a tight embrace. She felt Sara's hand cradling the back of her head to keep her close for longer than was probably necessary, but Felicity didn't mind a bit.
"You scared the hell out of me," Sara said quietly. "Again." Her hold on Felicity finally loosened and she backed away just enough to scan Felicity for any injuries. Her analysis didn't take long before she let out a gasp and stepped closer, touching Felicity's neck. "Oh my God, Felicity! What happened?"
"What do you mean?" Felicity asked, raising her hand to touch her own neck.
From her seat against the side of a nearby building, Thea explained, "You have nasty-looking bruises around your neck where Slade caught you by the throat when you tried to stab him." She frowned at Felicity and added, "That was really brave and stupid, you know."
"Well it seemed like a good idea at the time when Slade started moving Laurel out of the lair," Felicity defended. A second later, the realization dawned on her again and she dropped her head. "I had to do something. I should have done more."
Sara's eyes continued to widen as she listened to the conversation between the other two women, and she finally turned to Felicity and exclaimed, "You took a run at Slade Wilson!? Are you insane!? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Felicity told her firmly, staring straight into Sara's eyes. "I'm fine. My ribs feel a little bruised and now I have a headache, but I'm fine." Sara looked unconvinced but she didn't push the envelope any more. Felicity became solemn and shamefaced. "I'm sorry, Sara. I tried to help Laurel, but I just . . ." she trailed off helplessly. "I'm so sorry."
"Hey, no. Stop," Sara told her, pulling Felicity into her arms again. "Come here."
They stood there holding onto one another until Oliver came over looking tired and grave. "The sky's getting lighter," he said. "We have to find Laurel and stop Slade before the sun comes up."
"I think I might know where Slade could be holding Laurel," Felicity told them. She felt Sara squeeze their joined hands. "I think he may have taken her back to the foundry. That's where this battle started–"
"–And it's where Slade wants to end it," Oliver finished her thought.
"We need a plan of attack," Felicity said.
"No," Sara interjected pointedly, causing her two friends to stare incredulously at her. "We" – she let go of Felicity's hand to gesture between herself and Oliver – "need a plan of attack. You need rest." Sara set her hands, one of which was splinted at the wrist, on Felicity's shoulders and looked at her with care. "Felicity, you just broke out of the hospital after being given a volatile healing accelerator to instantly recover from injuries inflicted from being tortured. You need to recuperate from all of this."
Felicity turned to Oliver momentarily, but she eyed Sara sideways. "Oliver, could you just give us a minute, please?"
Looking between the two blondes, Oliver evidently decided that he really didn't want to be in the middle of whatever this was shaping up to be. "Uh . . . sure," he answered. "I'll just be right over there." He pointed to Diggle and Lyla and slowly ambled away with hesitant steps.
Felicity went back to staring back at Sara in defiance. "What I need, Sara, is to find Laurel while she's still breathing," she said firmly. "I won't be able to rest until I know that all of my friends are safe again. I can recuperate when this is all said and done."
"And when exactly do you think this is all going to be 'said and done', Felicity?" Sara demanded, growing more frustrated every second she spent having her attempts to care for Felicity rebuffed by the woman. "First it's getting Laurel back, then it will be determining what to do with Slade since Oliver obviously isn't going to kill him despite everything Slade has done to all of us, and then we'll have to find a new headquarters, then the city will need to be rebuilt . . ." Sara trailed off, looking into Felicity's eyes as if pleading with her to understand that what she was trying to say came from a place of deep care and protectiveness. "There is no 'said and done' in this life, Felicity. Something will always pop up, usually at the most inopportune of times."
Sara slid her hands down to join Felicity's as they looked at one another. "You're so selfless and giving, and you take so much upon yourself, Fliss," she said, raising her uninjured hand to sweep hair out of Felicity's soot-streaked face. "You're so good to everyone else that sometimes you forget to be good to yourself, but you can't do that."
"It's not a choice, Sara." Felicity's fingers closed around the hand that Sara had set on her face, and slowly lowered both their hands to their sides. "I am who I am, no matter what life I lead. And I may not have chosen this life, but this life chose me, and I have to honor that by living it the best way I know how– by never compromising who I am or going against what I believe is the right thing to do."
Sara continued looking at her for a moment, then her shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'm not going to win this argument, am I?" she asked knowingly.
"Not this time," Felicity told her, smiling apologetically. She squeezed Sara's hand once and then turned back to the rest of the gathering group. "We should find somewhere to come up with a plan. Four masked vigilantes, seven ninja assassins, and a quartet of A.R.G.U.S. inmates standing out in the open is going to attract attention." Felicity looked over her shoulder at the hovel that had been their secondary safe haven. "I'm pretty sure lair-number-two is what you would call compromised."
"Yeah," Oliver agreed. "But where?"
"The clock tower hasn't been found out, torn down, or blown up yet," Sara said. "At this point, it's about as safe a place as any."
"Then we need to move fast," Oliver said.
"When the foundry was damaged in the quake, we reconstructed it with two secondary passageways in and out," Felicity explained, while Digg was drawing a crude draft of the Arrowcave's floor plan.
Oliver, Sara, Diggle, Felicity, Roy, and Nyssa al Ghul had set up in the clock tower and gathered around the table where Diggle was drafting makeshift blueprints of the foundry. Lyla had taken the members of the Suicide Squad back to the A.R.G.U.S. convoy on the outskirts of the city upon Oliver's request and Digg's insistence that she go and try to buy them more time from Waller and her firepower. As soon as Sin had shown up, she had taken over Roy's place at Thea's side, so that Roy could join the war party while Hamilton assessed her injuries more thoroughly in the other room. No one but Nyssa really knew where the other League assassins had disappeared to, but they all knew that they weren't very far away.
"Obviously, the main route is the door at the back of Verdant's pantry," Diggle continued. He marked an 'x' where he had done a rough drawing of the club's pantry. "One of the secondary entry-and-escape points is a set of cellar doors out in the back alley that open up into a stairway, which runs through the network of pipes, and then leads to the high-rise platform. The other is through the abandoned service tunnels underneath the old steel mill where there's a ladder leading up to the floor grate directly inside the Arrowcave." He marked two more 'X's where the platform and floor grate were."
"The final way you can get in is through the ventilation shafts, which I wouldn't recommend unless you're small enough to move through them and graceful enough not to break something falling thirty feet onto hard concrete trying to get out of them," Felicity explained.
"Could Roy get through them?" Sara asked, sizing up the young man.
"Watch it!" Roy squawked indignantly.
Diggle smirked and rolled his eyes that the exchange. "No, he couldn't. No one any bigger than Thea or Sin could fit through that air vent," he answered.
"Thea is not joining us on this one," Oliver told them firmly.
"Neither is Sin," Sara agreed. "So the air shaft is out. That leaves the main entrance, the alleyway access and the floor grate."
"Oliver and Sara will go in through the main access," Felicity instructed. "Roy and Miss al Ghul will enter through the alleyway."
Diggle looked at Nyssa, "You can tell your guys to take the night off; six against one sounds fair enough to me." Nyssa nodded in acknowledgment, and Diggle continued, "When Lyla gets back, she and I will plan on coming up through the floor grate."
"If we can get him closer to the salmon ladder," Roy began, "we'll have him completely surrounded."
"But this plan also reveals all the ways into your headquarters," Nyssa pointed out. "Are you sure that's wise?"
Roy turned his head to look at the assassin. "It's no worse than revealing them to the 'daughter of Ra's al Ghul; Heir to The Demon'," he countered with an impassive tone, putting emphasis around Nyssa's title.
"This is true," Nyssa assented in a similarly neutral manner. She turned to regard Diggle and Felicity, "Your plan is as good as any other. When your wife returns, Mr. Diggle, we will begin." With this final statement, the war party began to disband.
After a few minutes, Sara caught Oliver staring across the room with a look of consternation on his face and she followed his gaze. He was watching Felicity as she sat down against the clock tower wall, looking as if her mind was a million miles away. Sara would have bet her entire final paycheck from Verdant that she knew what Felicity was spaced out about.
As Oliver made a move to approach Felicity, Sara held up a hand. "I'll talk to her," she said, leaving no room for argument.
Oliver nodded reluctantly and turned back to the others, and Sara went over to Felicity and lowered herself to the ground in front of her. Sara grabbed hold of the hands that Felicity had had resting in her lap and ducked her head to catch Felicity's blue gaze. Felicity blinked several times rapidly, as if she was trying to hold back tears again, but she finally met Sara's eyes.
"Hey," Sara said softly to her. "You wanna tell me what you're thinking?"
Felicity tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "This is my fault. I-I know Oliver said that it isn't, but . . . it is," she said, eyes flicking between Sara's eyes and their joined hands. "She's your sister, Sara. How could I have let this happen?"
"You didn't," Sara objected. She gave Felicity an earnest look. "From what Thea says, you put up one hell of a fight, Felicity." Sara paused in her methods when she saw that Felicity remained unmoved. "Look, you're right. Laurel is my sister, and I'm not blaming you." Her eyebrows furrowed in confused sympathy as she asked, "So why are you blaming yourself?"
Felicity was quiet for a long time, and Sara waited patiently for her answer. Finally Felicity looked back into Sara's eyes and asked, "Do you know why I do what I do? The sidekick thing?"
"To help people?" Sara guessed. "Because it's the right thing to do? Because that's who you are?"
"Yes, to all of the above, but that's not the real reason why I do this," Felicity told Sara. "I do it because someone has to save the heroes when they're too busy saving everyone but themselves; you, Oliver, Digg, and Roy. It's my job to take care of you and protect you."
Sara let Felicity's words and the meaningful way she was looking at Sara sink in. She wondered idly if Felicity had meant to leave that 'you' open to interpretation. She wondered if Felicity meant to make Sara feel like she was speaking specifically about her, whether Felicity intended to make Sara feel like they were talking about something deeper and more unspoken than Team Arrow.
"I used to think I was really good at that job," Felicity continued after a moment. "Then Oliver lost the company and Roy went on his mirakuru-rage-rampage and you left . . . again. And lately I've started wondering if I can even do this job at all. I got taken by Slade because I can't fight, and that makes me a liability. What if all I can do is make matters worse for everyone?"
"Listen to me," Sara cut in immediately with a stern tone. She leaned forward into Felicity so that their foreheads were almost touching, "you don't make things worse, Felicity. You do make them so much better. You're the only person who can get through to Ollie when he's tripping on his guilty conscience and his hero complex. You're the first person Roy looks to in a crisis because he knows that you are going to be the one who figures out how to turn things around. You're Digg's closest confidant. And I . . . " – she looked straight into Felicity's eyes – "I wouldn't be here without you.
"You're the only person who could have convinced me to come home, convinced me that this is where I belong. You saved me, Felicity. You saved me from myself, and that is something that no one else has ever been able to do." She gave Felicity a moment to think about that before she concluded, "Oliver may be the leader of this band of merry masks, but you're the one who holds us together. You're not just the brains of this operation– you're the heart. You're the one who reminds us why we fight and what we're fighting for, and you do it better than anyone else ever could."
Sara cradled Felicity's face in one hand and rubbed her thumb soothingly over the other girl's cheek, just as Oliver had done when Felicity had been shot by the Clock King while trying to protect Sara. Felicity was bravery and brains and beauty, all in one; she was everything. As Felicity closed her eyes and leaned into Sara's touch, Sara realized she was only just beginning to understand that her distracting infatuation for Felicity was becoming something else entirely. And even though those feelings terrified Sara more than all her nightmares of the past six hellish years combined, she was more afraid of letting it get away from her.
"You should get some rest," she told Felicity, still smoothing her thumb across the younger blonde's soft cheek. "I meant what I said about recuperating, Felicity. That serum healed your wounds hyper-fast but your body is weaker now because of it. Plus, maybe when you wake up, Slade will be dealt with and we can have that Chinese food and uninterrupted sleep-marathon."
Felicity looked back at her carefully. "Are you sure you should be going out there with your wrist in a brace?" she asked disapprovingly, staring at the injured hand.
"It's fine," she responded mechanically, as if she had been programmed to say it.
Giving Sara a skeptical look, Felicity argued, "It doesn't look fine, it looks swollen."
"I've fought before with worse injuries than this," Sara said, holding up her arm in gesture.
Felicity grimaced. "You know, strangely, that doesn't make me feel any better," she deadpanned.
Sara sighed and pushed a few unruly curls behind Felicity's ear. "I can't let Ollie face this alone. Slade may be primarily targeting him, but we're both to blame for turning Slade into what he is now, and now he has my sister. It's my fight just as much as it is Oliver's."
"Then please, be careful," Felicity told her.
Sara wasn't sure if she could keep that promise if she made it, so she was a little relieved when Nyssa showed up at her side and looked down at the two of them.
"Agent Michaels has returned. It is time, Ta-er al-Asfer," Nyssa told her solemnly.
Sara nodded her acknowledgment and stood to leave, but she was stopped by a hand on her wrist and she turned back to find Felicity staring at her with grave eyes.
"Be. Careful," Felicity told her with the utmost seriousness.
Still unsure of what to say to that, Sara smiled and said, "You're always gonna be cute." She leaned in and kissed Felicity's cheek briefly, before turning to go.
This time, Felicity was too stunned to stop her again.