A/N/: So here's the final chapter of the Slade story arc. After this it will just be kind of the aftermath of everything and maybe some fluff if you guys are up for it. Most of the next few chapters will be about Sara and Felicity getting closer and a few episode-like chapters where they have one bad guy that they take down by the end of it.
Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed or followed or favorited this story. Your support and constructive criticism has been so great and so supportive! I just think all of you are so awesome, so keep reading!
–Necessary–
Less than an hour after the others had left for the final face-off with Slade in the Arrowcave, Felicity had fallen half-asleep when she was woken by someone shaking her.
"Felicity. Felicity!" Thea yelled to her, effectively startling the IT girl to consciousness.
Felicity sat bolt upright on the cot in the clocktower and looked in the direction of Thea and Sin, who had been monitoring the team's movements while she rested. Out of habit, Felicity reached for her glasses, before realizing that she had tossed them aside out of frustration when the secondary lair fell in. The blurry shape that Felicity recognized as Thea stood up and came over to Felicity.
"Here," she said, reaching forward and placing a pair of glasses on Felicity's face. They weren't her prescription glasses, but they helped clear things up a little at least.
When things were clearer, Felicity looked around and saw that Thea and Sin had routers, various tablets, smartphones, and laptops, and a global positioning system set up on the floor of the tower. Sin was sitting cross-legged in front of Felicity's borrowed tablet, staring anxiously from the screen to Felicity and Thea, and then back again. Felicity looked to Thea and saw the same scared and uneasy look on the younger Queen's face as well.
"What?!" Felicity asked carefully. "What did I miss?"
"No one is answering back over the comms," Sin explained, turning the screen that held Oliver, Sara, Roy, Diggle, and Lyla's voiceprints, which were all now straight lines reflecting the radio silence.
Felicity dropped to the ground next to Sin, grabbed her laptop and pulled up her GPS location software. "How long ago did they go silent?" Felicity asked.
"We heard Sara confirm that Laurel was there, then we heard Slade. They started fighting him, but after that, their comms went dead," Sin explained.
"Roy didn't even make a sound before his went quiet," Thea said. "Diggle started telling us that we had 'soldiers down', and after that, his and Lyla's comms went offline too."
Felicity nodded to show that she heard their words, but she was too focused on trying to locate the team's trackers and get the comms back online to form a verbal response. She knew for certain that Sara's insole-trackers were fully functional, the locator chip in John's wristwatch was online, and, if Oliver hadn't already found and disabled it, the one hidden in the bottom of his quiver should work as well. The GPS locked onto the three queries and showed that none of them had left the foundry.
"Where are you going?" Thea asked as Felicity stood up.
She turned back to Thea who, Felicity noticed for the first time, looked scared and unsure. "I'm going to the foundry," she answered slowly. "Well, first I'm going to my apartment to get my contacts, then I'm going to the foundry."
"You cannot be serious," Dr. Hamilton exclaimed, ripping back the curtain of his makeshift examination room and glaring at her. "What is it you're planning on doing?"
Felicity looked at him with a fire in her eyes. "Whatever is necessary to save the people I love." Emil opened his mouth to argue, but Felicity hardened her stare in what she hoped was a steadfast expression. "It's my team, my responsibility, my family, and my life," she said, "so I'm going."
"But seriously, though! What are you gonna do once you get there?" Sin questioned. "I mean, this guy is crazy strong and you've already been put through his evil wringer too many times. I'm just saying." She held her hands up in her own defense.
Hamilton sighed. "You can't go alone," he said.
"She won't." Thea stood gracefully to her feet. She held up a hand for the others to be quiet. "You called them your family," she said slowly to Felicity. "Well, they're my family too. Oliver is all the family I have left in this world, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose him too." She looked into Felicity's eyes with a plea for understanding. "You told me to stay in Starling, you told me Ollie needed me, you told me that I could be a hero if I chose to be one. So let's do this, Felicity. Together. You and me and anyone else who's willing to fight with us. Let's end Slade Wilson, once and for all."
"YEAH!" Sin cheered, jumping up from the floor and thrusting her hand into the air. Everyone simply stared at her, and the tips of her ears turned red when she noticed. "Sorry, motivational speeches really get me fired up."
Felicity smiled affectionately at Sin, and then at Thea. She finally rolled her eyes in defeat and muttered, "Oliver is going to kill me."
"Nah," Thea said, slinging an arm over Felicity's shoulder as they made their way toward the exit, "he'll only kill you if we don't die trying to save him first."
"That's reassuring," Felicity deadpanned.
Dr. Hamilton watched Sin trailed after Felicity and Thea as they left to probably get themselves killed. "No one listens to me," he grumbled to himself as he turned back to clean up his supplies.
When the three girls had stepped out of the clocktower, it was already apparent that there would be no sunrise that day. The sky was nearly as dark as night and rain poured down from thick, black rainclouds that flickered with lightning in between the claps of thunder. Even in the dim light, as they drove Diggle's black utility van through the city en route to Felicity's apartment, they could see the damage that had been done to the city over the past few nights, especially this last one.
"It's like a freaking zombie apocalypse," Sin commented.
"It sort of is," Thea replied, catching sight of what used to be her family's company. "Look at the QC building."
Felicity couldn't look. She couldn't look because she was sure that as soon as she saw the ruins of Queen Consolidated, she would lose a part of herself that she could never get back. Her entire life, up until Oliver Queen had shown up bleeding out in her backseat, had been her job on the ninth floor of that building. To see it in ruins now would ruin her. Working for Queen Consolidated had given her so much; it had brought Oliver to her, and, by extension, Digg, then Roy and Thea and Sin and Detective Lance and Laurel . . . and Sara. All the people she loved most in the world.
"I just need to grab a couple of things," Felicity told Thea and Sin as they walked into her apartment, "but you girls can make yourselves at home for a moment."
Felicity went right into her room and over to her closet to pull out the clothes she had worn during their mission of bombing Queen Consolidated's Applied Sciences building, sans the ski mask. She knew she should have disposed of the evidence and thrown them away after the mission, but she kept them as a sort of reminder to herself that she could run with Oliver and Digg and Sara if she wanted to. Plus, they were sort of the only mission-appropriate clothes she owned.
Thea and Sin came into her room just as she was pulling on the boots and her leather jacket.
"You look like a character from Mission Impossible," Thea said with a grin that reminded Felicity of Oliver. "Which, you know, is sort of appropriate, given the circumstances." She held out her hand to Felicity with something in it. "Here. We hope you don't mind, we grabbed your contacts from your bathroom."
Felicity took the case from Thea and carefully put her contacts in. "Thanks," she told them.
As she put the contacts in, she realized the irony of it all; when everyone else went out to save the day, they put masks over their eyes to hide their identities, but Felicity was taking her glasses off her eyes, and she felt as if doing so sort of hid her own. She blinked rapidly a few times to get adjusted to the sensation of the lenses on her eyes, but she could see much better now than she could before, and she felt a little safer because of it.
"So are we, like, going to hold up an archery store on the way, or . . ?" Sin asked after a too long silence.
"Not necessary," Felicity told her, walking over to a large wooden trunk at the foot of her bed.
She lifted the lid up and heard Thea and Sin's simultaneous gasp. Felicity had to admit, it was probably the last thing they expected; after all, what mild-mannered IT-girl had a trunk full of weaponry stowed in her bedroom? The girls were speechless for several more moments.
"You have a chest full of various weapons in your bedroom?" Thea asked incredulously.
"Kinky," Sin muttered, just loud enough to be barely audible.
Felicity lifted a red bow and quiver of arrows from the trunk and held the bow up. "Technically, Roy has a chest full of various weapons in my bedroom," Felicity corrected. Realization dawned on her and she closed her eyes, "That came out so wrong." She looked at Thea and explained, "It's Roy's arsenal. He hasn't told Oliver yet, but he's been training with different weapons. Roy didn't feel safe keeping them at his place in The Glades and he couldn't keep them in the foundry for obvious reasons, so he asked me to take them for safekeeping."
"Well . . ." Thea began slowly, "I guess I can't be mad at him, since it's kind of our one saving grace right now. What's in this thing?"
Felicity rummaged through the chest of weapons. "Umm . . . bow . . another bow . . countless arrows . . throwing knives . . . stun gun . . . sword . . ."
"Hand me one of the bows," Thea said. "And give Sin the stun gun, it might be the safest option."
"Hey!" Sin said indignantly. Both Felicity and Thea gave her looks and she slumped in defeat. "Okay, yeah. Fine."
Just as the girls were getting packed up to go, Felicity's cell-phone rang. She took it out of her jacket pocket and looked at the caller ID with a frown. As much as she didn't want to have this conversation right now, she knew she had to, so she took the call.
"Hi, Detective Lance."
Sara was pretty sure she had never been this pissed off in her entire life, and that was saying something considering she had grown up in constant competition with her perfect older sister. Ironically, her sister was the reason she was pissed off now too, only now it wasn't at Laurel, but at the man who was threatening Laurel's life.
She should have known as soon as her comm started glitching that they had walked into a trap, but without any means of communication with the others, Sara hadn't been able to call them off or warn them. All that she and Oliver had been able to do was to fight Slade the best they could, but Slade knew their fighting styles and all of their tricks and, when the assassins showed up on the platform, Slade had known all of theirs as well. Three of Nyssa's men had been shot and fallen from the steel balcony before they could even raise their bows.
Thankfully, Nyssa – being who she was – realized quickly what was happening and shouted for the rest of her men to stay back in Arabic. Nyssa herself had leaped over the railing and landed cat-like on her feet on the concrete floor, distracting Slade long enough for Diggle and Lyla to come up through the grate. Nyssa fought relentlessly, dodging every swipe of Slade's sword and parrying with her dagger like the pro that she was. Digg had announced over the comms that they had wounded men, and he and Lyla had rushed to the fallen assassins to check for signs of life and to pull them out of harm's way when they realized that all three were still miraculously breathing.
After that, everything became fuzzy and abstract. Everything except for the sharp pain she had felt as Slade had slammed her head-first to the concrete floor. She had been oblivious until a few minutes ago, when she woke to find her arms tied behind her back with abrasive rope.
"Laurel," she muttered, using only the muscles of her stomach to pull herself to a sitting position.
"Are you alright?" Nyssa asked from beside her.
"Where's Laurel?" Sara asked stubbornly.
Sara turned her head to find Nyssa's face full of the rare worry that she seemed to reserve only for the Canary. She turned her head more, trying to spot Laurel, but the motion made her feel dizzy and nauseous, so she rested her forehead against Nyssa's available shoulder. Sara waited until the world stopped spinning before she lifted it again.
"What happened?" she asked softly, looking around the foundry to find all the others in the same position as her and Slade pacing the floor in front of them. She could see Laurel in front of her, but too far for her to reach.
"You were knocked unconscious," Nyssa explained. She cut her eyes in Slade's direction. "That . . . man – if you'd like to call him that – threw you to the floor. You hit your head. It is a miracle that your neck wasn't broken from the impact."
"Are you okay?" Sara asked Nyssa, turning back to look at her.
The assassin shifted her gaze back to Sara, and she smiled in a way that Sara hadn't seen in a long time. "Aside from my pride being mortally wounded, I am fine," Nyssa answered. "Are you concerned for me, Ta-er al-Asfer?"
"Of course I am," Sara answered.
How could Nyssa ever think otherwise? Nyssa had practically brought her back from the dead more than once, had been the only love Sara felt for four long years, had fought by her side when trouble arose, and had whispered away her nightmares when they consumed her in the darkness.
"I always will be," the blonde added, looking at Nyssa meaningfully. In that moment, Sara swore she saw a look of understanding and acceptance flicker in Nyssa's dark eyes.
"How touching," the loud voice of Slade interrupted suddenly. When Sara looked to him, he glared back at her with resentment. "For a moment there, Sara, you made it look as though you care for someone other than yourself. But that's not possible for you, now is it?"
Sara glared back, her face turning hard and murderous. "You don't know anything about me," she spat.
"I know you boarded a ship with your sister's boyfriend without any thought to the consequences of your actions," Slade countered cunningly. "Betraying your sister, and for what?" Slade suddenly shot forward and grabbed Laurel by her hair, clenching it in his fist. "You had to have known that she was always the one he truly loved."
"Laurel!" she screamed futilely.
He turned his attentions toward Laurel and Sara felt bile rise in her throat at the look of terror on Laurel's tear-streaked but still defiant face. "You know, the kid had a photograph of you while we were on that island. He looked at it every day," Slade told her conversationally, still holding Laurel by her hair. He shoved her down onto the concrete floor. "Oliver's one true love," he sneered apathetically, "and the sister of the woman who traded Shado's life for her own." He lowered his sword point to the back of Laurel's neck.
"NO!" Oliver screamed, just as he had screamed at Ivo that night on the island.
"Slade, stop! Stop!" Sara cried desperately, and it did cause Slade a moment of pause. "You want to right a wrong? An eye for an eye? You want Oliver to know despair?" she questioned. "Then take me. Kill me!"
"Sara, no no," Laurel sobbed. "No, no, no no . . ."
"What are you doing, al–Asfer?" Nyssa demanded in a panicked voice.
"Sara, don't!" Oliver told her.
Sara's attention remained fixed on the man in front of her, her pale green eyes met Slade's steel glare without fear. "Let Oliver live the rest of his life knowing that he let Shado die for nothing. I'm the one you want. I'm the one who is alive because Shado isn't. Take my life. Kill me, the way I should have been killed instead of Shado," she offered.
Slade stepped away from Laurel, who continued to shriek and cry 'no', as he pressed his blade to her sister's neck. Sara raised her chin to avoid the sharpness of the steel, but it only served to force her to look directly into the darkness of Slade's eyes. She saw nothing there, and though it didn't surprise her, it still startled her.
"If only you had been this noble back then," Slade spoke softly. "You live because Shado died, and what an insult your life has been to her sacrifice. You've only served to become an even more thoughtless, cold-blooded killer. You don't deserve the life she gave for you. Tonight, you will follow her in death."
Slade raised his sword swiftly, letting out an anguished bellow. Sara ducked her head, waiting for the blade to drop and for it all to end.
"Not tonight she won't," Felicity's voice declared, causing every one of their heads to whip around to look at her, including Slade.
Felicity had a bow in her hands with an arrow drawn back and ready to fire. Her glasses were gone, replaced by a steely look in her eyes that none of her friends had ever seen before.
"Felicity, no!"
"You," Slade growled in anger, suddenly pulling a gun from the holder at his hip and pointing it at Felicity, "are proving maddeningly hard to kill, Miss Smoak. How is that possible for a woman of your weak stature?"
"You know, they say that love is the strongest emotion," Felicity said conversationally, never taking her eyes off of Slade, "and that that also makes it the most dangerous." She paused calculatingly, before continuing on. "Well, Mr. Wilson, right now you have everyone I love at your mercy, and that has made me very dangerous; because you're right, I'm not a fighter like all the others." She looked at Slade with a wild quirk of her brow and told him, "All the strength I have comes from my heart."
"Well then, I guess we'll have to put an end to that 'heart'," Slade crooned contemptuously.
Several things happened at once, but all of them seemed to happen as if in slow motion. Slade fired his gun twice. Felicity let go of the arrow in her bow. The arrow cut directly through Slade's throat; he never even tried to defend himself, simply assuming that Felicity would miss. His bullets hit Felicity's chest in rapid succession and she was knocked backwards to the ground from the force of it. Then there was the sound of steel as Slade's sword clattered to the concrete while Slade dropped to his knees, making a gurgling sound and sputtering blood as the mirakuru cure spread through his system and blood filled his throat. After that, the world seemed to snap back to full speed, leaving only a ringing in Sara's ears.
"FELICITY!" Oliver, Sara, and Digg screamed at the same time. Roy would have cried out too, if his heart in his throat had allowed it.
Behind Felicity, Sara could see her father stepping carefully into the room with his gun held out and he dropped to his knees as soon as he saw Felicity's prone form on the floor. With a clatter of footsteps on the grated iron high-rise, Thea appeared with her bowstring drawn back and Sin beside her with a stun gun.
Oliver was finally able to work his way through the ropes that bound him and he turned to untie Laurel next. As soon as he was on his feet, Sara cried out, "Ollie!" to get him to untie her as well. They ran over and dropped to their knees on the other side of Felicity, as Thea and Sin appeared on the sublevel and began cutting everyone else free.
"Felicity? Felicity!" Oliver yelled, staring at Felicity.
He had tears in his eyes and Sara's were already rolling down her cheeks as she held Felicity's hand in her own. Sara's crying stopped quickly when she felt Felicity squeeze her hand, and she held her breath.
"Felicity?" she asked softly.
Felicity came to with a wheezing cough and a groaned "Ow. Okay, yeah, that hurt."
All Sara could think was, what the hell just happened?
. . .
"You know just as well as I do that I don't like this plan," Detective Lance said as he and Felicity stood at the back of his cruiser with the trunk open. He looked over his shoulder at Sin and Thea, who were talking idly to each other a short distance away. "They're just kids, and you're not that much older, Miss Smoak."
"Felicity."
"I'm sorry?" the detective questioned.
Felicity looked up to Detective Lance. "You should call me Felicity," she told him. "If you're going to help me do what's necessary to save the people we both love, detective, then you should call me Felicity."
Lance's gruff exterior seemed to melt away at the request, as if he was seeing a brave and capable woman where he had once seen an impressionable young accomplice of the Starling City vigilante. He wondered how often it was that this woman's guidance led The Arrow to save the city. From the look in her eyes, he could tell that she couldn't be talked out of this.
He reached into the trunk, pulled out a box, and handed it to Felicity. "Since you're clearly going to do this with or without me," he said as Felicity opened the flaps and looked inside, "you should probably wear that, Felicity."
"Thank you, sir," she told him. She took out the vest that had been in the box and put it on under her dark shirt and leather jacket.
"Don't mention it," Lance said, closing the trunk. He looked at her more earnestly, "I'm serious about that. Don't mention it to anybody."
. . .
Detective Lance offered out his hand and pulled Felicity to her feet. As she stood, the two flattened bullets fell to the ground harmlessly, and everyone looked at Felicity. The IT-girl shrugged.
"Kevlar," she explained simply.
"Oh, thank God!" Oliver laughed as he wrapped Felicity up in a tight hug that caused her to wince.
"Ow! Oliver, oww!" she reminded him pointedly. "Just because being shot didn't kill me, doesn't mean it didn't hurt."
"Dad!" Laurel yelled, throwing her arms around her father's neck.
"Laurel! It's okay, sweetie" he reassured his eldest daughter. "You're going to be okay now." He wrapped her up in his arms, satisfied that she was safe. He held one of his arms out to Sara as well, and she stepped into him.
"I'm okay too, Dad. I promise," Sara told him, laughing to release some of the tension that had filled her body. She squeezed her father and kissed her sister's head before turning back to the group.
"You made that shot perfectly," Sara said to Felicity in astonishment
Felicity nodded tightly. "I wasn't training for nothing." She looked over Sara's shoulder to where Mr. Lance was still hugging his eldest daughter. "Detective," she said, garnering his attention. "Those reinforced handcuffs and the super healer."
"Right," Lance said.
He turned and snapped a pair of titanium-enforced shackles around Slade's wrists and then took out the arrow that Felicity had shot into his throat. Lance set it aside for the time being and Sin quickly handed him a shot of the hyper-healing drug that had saved Felicity and Roy's lives. The detective sat back on his heels once all was done, and looked at Felicity with a simple nod.
"Looks like no one's gonna die tonight," Lance remarked. "You did good, Felicity."
Felicity blushed at the praise. She never had been good at taking compliments. "I was just doing what was necessary," she answered.
"We'll turn him over to Waller," Oliver said, coming to stand over Slade's recovering body. He looked up at Lance, "If it's alright with you, detective."
"Hey, the less I have to see of this guy the better," Quentin returned, holding his hands up in surrender. He looked more closely at Oliver for a minute. "So you're really him, huh? 'The Arrow'."
"I'm the man under the hood," Oliver replied. "'The Arrow' is just what people call me when I'm wearing it."
Quentin looked at the group of heroes. "The Arrow," – he looked from Oliver to his youngest daughter – "The Canary," – he turned to Nyssa – "Heir to The Demon," – Lance looked at Roy – "and what do they call you, Red Rocket?"
"Arsenal," Thea answered for her boyfriend, giving him a 'yeah, I know' sort of look. "Emphasis on the 'arse' sometimes."
"And she's Speedy," Laurel told her father, looking at Thea who beamed in response. "Then there's Agent Michaels of A.R.G.U.S. and John "Digg" Diggle." Laurel looked to Felicity, "And Felicity Smoak: Hero of the Hour."
"One Time Hero of the Hour," Felicity told her pointedly. "Don't go getting any ideas, counselor."
With a smile, Detective Lance jokingly asked, "So what are you called when you're all together?"
Felicity, Digg, Roy, Sara, and Thea turned their heads to regard Oliver with coaxing smiles on their faces. For a minute, Oliver looked begrudging, but under the heat of five strong stares, he finally gave in and answered, "We're Team Arrow."