Chapter 9 - Sinceriously
Felicity moaned in frustration.
Three weeks. Three whole weeks and not a single trace of Oliver. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth.
The search for this mountain – where his combat should take place – proved equally unsuccessful. There existed no documentation of any previous cases of a trial of combat in any of the numerous databases Felicity had hacked. Oliver had mentioned a time period of 67 years since the latest had occurred, but apparently the event and its outcome was a secret shared only amongst members of the League.
From time to time Felicity also felt a sting of frustration towards Roy boiling up inside of her. When she and John had returned to the Lair, only to find Roy together with Thea there, Felicity had snapped. Felicity and Roy had quite a heated argument about the fact that he had told Thea everything, even though the latter claimed that she had most of it already figured out long before Roy showed her.
The thing, which kept gnawing inside Felicity, was that sharing this secret with Thea was something Oliver had strongly opposed. Therefor it was clearly a type of betrayal in Felicity's eyes to have his sister joining them so soon after her brother's disappearance. Felicity had actually screamed herself hoarse in the process of scolding Roy to the very maximum, while he in turn had kept his cool by clenching his fists so hard that his fingernails had dug deep cuts in his palms.
One argument however had settled their dispute. Felicity sort of agreed with Roy's decision – at least temporary – on one point. It was that sharing this secret with Thea now had drawn her further away from Malcolm Merlyn, which was something Oliver would definitely have wanted.
The four of them also shared a common goal: to find Oliver. That mutual target proved to slowly unite the group. It mended the broken trust Thea had in the three of them, but also the lack of faith the rest had in Thea.
As these weeks had slowly passed by, Felicity even had to admit that Thea had proven herself very useful and helped out anyway she possibly could. She had even reluctantly returned to her father to demand information about the mountain Oliver was headed to.
In an attempt to win some of his daughter's trust back, Malcolm answered every question she asked wholly truthful for once. Unfortunately, he said that only the pair participating in the trial and their respective witness were told the secret location. As he had been neither in the past, he had no idea of its location, but assumed it was somewhere close to Nanda Parbat.
But searching for one specific mountaintop in the area around Tibet wasn't Felicity's idea of fun, especially when she had no clue what she was searching for.
She had tried hacking every database, government, secret organisation and satellite she could think of, but nothing had helped.
"Why can't this League have a website that says 'Hi! You wanna find us? Come to this mountaintop! Participating in a trial of combat? Go to this hill!'." Felicity snorted. "There exists very simple sites, where your own website is only one simple click away. Simple as that! Can't be that hard, can it? Even people who haven't lost their baby teeth yet can make their own page. So why can't the legendary League of Assassins do it? I mean sinceriously!"
Diggle's confused face appeared from behind a laptop.
"What was that last one?" he asked in an amused tone.
"Just some word I made up. Smashed together sincere and seriously. You know, a person being both sincere and serious at the same time. So instead of saying two separate describing words, I can say one: sinceriously. Trying to cut down on my rambling you know, and one way is have fewer words in my sentences!" she explained proudly.
Diggle giggled. "There is just one problem with your idea. You just needed about a thousand other words to describe your newly invented one. So instead of two words, you needed one plus a long explanation." he jokingly teased her.
"Oh... But... Well... The word has actually been in dictionaries for a couple of years already, so it can't be my fault if people haven't kept up with the language development. Actually I believe more people should-" she begun before being cut of.
"Felicity!" Roy exclaimed from behind the table filled with documents, gaining her attention. "John was only joking, you know."
Next to him, Thea had to cover her mouth with her hand to not laugh out loud. Dig had in the meantime ducked behind the computer screen again, trying to silence his own outburst of laughter, while Roy bit his smiling lip.
However, Felicity's gaping and O-shaped mouth; making her look very much like a cartoon goldfish, was the drop that made the goblet overflow.
Thea, Roy and Diggle all burst out laughing. It took less than three seconds for Felicity to join in as well.
This was the first time in these past three weeks that they had all managed to let go of the tension for just a minute to have fun over something; to simply have a great laugh together like friends are suppose to.
For a very short moment, all problems in the world were gone for the four of them.
That status quo wouldn't last long however, because that very moment the two League-members Rohe' and Sarab arrived in Starling City to dispense justice for a fallen assassin.
A/N: "The drop that made the goblet overflow." is a literal translation of a Swedish saying. The English equivalent is "The straw that broke the camel's back", but as I like the Swedish expression better, I used the translation of it. ;)