'Khaji Da'

Oliver was running across the beach, sand slipping under his feet as they slapped the surface. The rocks were they had found Felicity's tracer was a minute away, less at the speed he was going; stopping at the site, Oliver found Sara kneeling on the floor.

"What are you doing? We need to blow it!"

"I'm trying!" she replied, feeling around for something in the rocks. Her small hands felt their way around the rocks until they dipped into the hole she had found earlier, exposing a weak point in the rocks. She grinned, "Got it."

Sara pulled a second sonic device from her own belt, motioning for Oliver to stand back as she placed it in the hole, changing the setting before she secured it, slamming the button with her palm.

It shrieked, but the Canary didn't flinch at the sound as Oliver did, used to it and its proficiency. The rock beneath them began to shake to a different frequency, the exploited crack deepening and growing larger. It cracked audibly, a spider-web of cracks in the stone.

When it collapsed, there was no warning. The cracks just grew too much to hold together, the rock split from the centre, disappearing into a dark void below and growing until it grew stable again, leaving a five foot around gap in the stones.

"What was that?" Oliver asked. When the stone had collapsed, he had been forced to run away a few steps so he didn't fall with it, the ground beneath him sinking before it crumbled. His face was a picture of shock as he ran around the crater to Sara.

"I had no explosives," she shrugged. "I improvised."

Oliver was proud of her. In his own way, he always had been; Sara had survived just like he had through the hell that was Lian Yu, she clawed her way back from the darkness of the League of Shadows but still had an amazing capacity for affection and love. She was strong.

He said, "I'll go down, find them. I need you to go and help Booster and Diggle. There's, uh, a robot."

"A Robot?"

Grimly, he nodded. The hole lay ahead of him as he stood beside her, staring down into it. A pool of white light from above lit what remained of the cavern: dimly, he could make out huge chunks of rock that had fallen when the ceiling collapsed, mingled with metal and the sound of gears grinding to a halt. Even the machines gave out and shuddered with the cave-in Sara had engineered - finally the shaking stopped.

But above all of that, Oliver saw destruction. Thick dust could be seen in the stream of sunlight, and the fact that entire machines had been pulverised by the falling rocks gave him little hope for the people down there. Mouth slowly falling open, the Arrow stared into the abyss.

"Hey," Sara said, appearing at his side again. Her hand on his arm was warm, but her eyes were as fierce as ever. "You're going to find them. They're going to be okay."

The stiff nod she got in response seemed to assure her; Sara was gone a moment later. Alone, Oliver fired an arrow into a crack between two rocks further away and winched himself into the pit.

When he landed, Oliver's feet kicked up dust. He stepped forwards a few steps, staying in the circle of light while he could, and shouted. "Can anybody hear me? Felicity!"

"Over here!"

The voice that shouted back belonged to Ted, but Oliver went running anyway. With the hole in the ceiling, there was a dim light in the collapsed cavern, and when draw to the direction of the voice he saw them – two bodies huddled together in the rocks.

"Is Felicity okay?" Oliver asked. There was no hesitancy or embarrassment in asking about her only and first, the desperation in his voice clear. Nearly loosing someone you loved made showing that love a lot easier. It took away the risk, because the biggest risk was losing them forever.

"I'm fine," Felicity answered, but her cheeks coloured a little. "Ted is too, by the way."

"Dandy, in fact," Ted added.

Climbing over the collapsed rocks to get to them, shocked more by the minute at their survival amidst such destruction, Oliver saw Ted stand and help Felicity up, keeping one hand on the girl at all times. The gesture struck him, but not in a jealous way: the closer Oliver got, the more he saw himself reflected in the way the other man was looking at Felicity – like he couldn't believe they were alive. The constant touch was just to confirm his disbelief, but Oliver knew the trauma would pass eventually.

Oliver reached them and mirrored the action, placing a hand on Felicity's arm quickly. "It's going to be okay."

Beside them, Ted let out a breath just short of a laugh. "Look at it."

"What?"

"The sun. I never thought I'd see it again."

The light was reflected in the tears brimming in Ted's eyes as he said it, and Oliver couldn't hate the man. He wanted to: looking for Ted is what had nearly got them all killed – especially Felicity. But by the way there was dust pounded into the blue of Ted's suit while Felicity was relatively clean, Oliver put together that Ted had put what he believed to be his last moments into trying to protect her. And Oliver couldn't hate anyone who loved Felicity as much as he did; someone who would do anything to protect her, just like him.

Blinking, Ted looked over to Oliver, nothing but earnest gratitude shining in his face. He held out a hand, "Thank you. You saved us."

"I'm just glad you're okay," Oliver replied, shaking it, but his gaze had wandered to Felicity again. Noticing, her face softened into a smile. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'm tired of the dark."

Felicity hooked her arms around Oliver's neck, clinging on to him tightly and trying to ignore the way their bodies were pressed together, as if the intersection of their hips and his hand on her back didn't set her skin aflame. Luckily, she had grown especially good at hiding it.

Prepared, he looked down at her. "You okay?"

"Having flashbacks of the last time we did this, actually," she teased, smiling playing on her lips. At this, Oliver's own twitched up as he fired an arrow out of the hole above, the rope attached going taunt a second later. It was one of his special arrows, and pulled them up a moment later.

Oliver grabbed the edge of the hole and hauled them both over the ridge, kneeling to put Felicity gently on her feet. She nodded a thanks as she took a few steps onto the beach, closing her eyes briefly. The touch of the ocean was on the breeze, and she never thought she could love a smell so much. The sun was warm on her skin and she could see the light through her closed eyelids, even though the sounds were no good, crashing and explosions, she was grateful to hear something other than the chaos below in the pit.

She was alive.

"So," Felicity smirked, turning back to Oliver. "Are you going to damsel-carry Ted up like that, too?"

The thought alone only turned her smirk into a grin. Just as he rolled his eyes at that comment, a hand appeared at the hole, followed by another as Ted's head appeared, looking between them. When Felicity made a face at him while Oliver offered a hand up, the brown haired man shrugged, "You were taking too long."

A loud crash behind them diverted all of their attention to the fight, which had moved further down the beach; with a simultaneous glance at one another, the three set off in perfect time together towards it.

They arrived to a rock being thrown by the robot, picking up the weight like it was nothing and flinging it towards Booster, who was struck by the rock as he tried to dodge it. Knocked off balance, Booster fell like a lead weight and hit the beach. He did not get up.

Diggle was firing into the robot as Sara had inexplicably managed to climb onto it's back, trying to open a control panel to shut the damn thing down, in what looked like the worst piggyback in human history.

All in all, the fight wasn't looking good for them.

"We have to do something!" Felicity shouted, coming to a stop just outside of the circle of motion. She looked to the two men beside her, noticing Oliver already had his bow in his hands, ready to fight. Thinking a thousand thoughts at once, one caught somewhere in her mind and she turned to Ted abruptly. "Wait! You've fought the same robot before, how did you beat him then?"

"I didn't," Ted replied, shaking his head a little. His eyes had been on Booster's prone form, but he tore them away to look into hers searchingly now. "Dan did. And it cost him his life."

"How did he do it?"

Ted fumbled for words, struck at the realisation that last time he was on this island with that robot, he lost his friend and mentor. "I- uh, I don't know. He had powers, a scarab – I had it back at the base, but I could never get it to work for me."

"This?" Felicity asked, pulling the metallic blue beetle she had found when they were looking for Ted out of her bag. After the cleaning Diggle had given it, it shone in the sunlight, looking . . . unreal. Or not earthly, anyway.

"That's it," Ted nodded, brow furrowed. He wondered, but didn't ask how she'd got it. He had believed it lost, having carried it with him through every fight but loosing it when Carapax nabbed him back in the outskirts of Chicago. Running a hand through his hair, he babbled on, "But I could never get it to work like he did! There was . . . a word, a code, something he had to say to activate it."

"What? Ted, hurry!"

"Uh . . ." he paused, eyes flicking from left to right as he thought back. Suddenly, they froze. "That's it - Khaji Da!"

Felicity blinked, "Khaji Da?"

"No! Don't say it!" Ted screamed, but it was too late. Even before the words had finished leaving his lips, they were deaf to Felicity, who gave her own ragged scream of pain at the jolts of electricity surging through her arm in an instant, falling onto her knees in the sand, hand with the scarab in held in front of her.

It was glowing blue, as were the veins in her arm as she held it - as soon as she had said the words, the beetle had bitten into her skin, dripping blood down her palm as it buried itself in her hand. Connected to her now, it began its takeover, filling her bloodstream and turning her veins blue from her arm, creeping up her neck as she leaned back and screamed, stopping only when it reached her head – her brain.

Although her eyes were filled with tears streaming down her face, the pain so overwhelming Felicity could think of nothing but the agony in her palm, spreading like fire through her body, she could see two blurred shapes move in the haze. Vaguely aware that it was her friends, Ted and Oliver, she could only watch as Oliver tried to touch her and was blasted away by a blue beam of light. Ted didn't try to touch her after that, but by the way his mouth was working, she guessed he was trying to talk to her – but a buzzing filled her head, only drowned out by her own screaming. The entire time, she did not stop.

But as soon as the blue reached her head, the pain vanished instantly. Then, there was a voice.

Well, it was almost a voice. It was in no language she had ever heard, not human at all, but somehow, she could understand it. The voice in her head saw Ted, as she blinked the tears away and he came into focus; suddenly, the voice screamed that he was a threat and went into battle mode.

The effect was instantaneous. From the Beetle attached to her arm, armour grew, covering her arm and shoulders, even a helmet shielding her head, a screen inside letting her see a video feed of what lay ahead of her. A red scanner picked out weak points on her friend's body, targeting them, and her hand lifted not of her accord, a weapon of some kind powering up with a hum – pointed right at Ted's heart.

"No! No, he's not a threat, he's my friend," Felicity begged aloud, hoping she could communicate with the scarab on some level. It responded by recommending Ted's annihilation anyway, based on his obviously weak armour and the uselessness of humans. "No, I don't want to kill Ted! Really."

The scarab took that moment to point out that as it had scanned her memories, it knew she had threatened to kill Ted on multiple occasions, and a couple of times felt like following through.

Felicity just sighed, "I didn't actually want to kill him. I was exaggerating."

Apparently not understanding the concept of exaggeration, the scarab argued until a loud crash from the fight ahead drew its attention. Turning, the scarab scanned Carapax, picking out weak points and once again suggesting annihilation as the best option.

"Actually, you have no arguments this time," Felicity answered, but something tugged at her gut. "Can you make the visor clear?"

Grumbling, the scarab obliged her anyway. Felicity saw Ted clearer with the help of her peripheral vision, watching her slack jawed as she stood, waiting to go into the fight. She turned to him quickly, putting her human hand on his arm.

Relieved to see her face after the screaming and eerie silence under the helmet, Ted tried to ask ten questions at once. "Are you okay? What's happening? What is that thing?"

"Teddy, I'm fine. I think," Felicity looked at him. "The scarab . . . it's alive. It's talking in a language, sort of like the code I write for computers. I can see it as I hear it. It can destroy Carapax."

"It can?"

"But should I? He's a person, Ted. Carapax's body is dead – if I destroy the robot, what happens to him?"

"He's not really alive," Oliver answered; Felicity turned on her heels to see him standing there. The scarab scanned him, suggested annihilation, which Felicity was really starting to worry about, but fell quiet when she told it to. She re-focused on Oliver, who was talking, "He chose to do this to himself, and he will hurt people if he gets away. He killed himself, Felicity. You're not killing him – he's dead already."

"Oliver's right," Ted agreed quickly. "Do you really believe a human soul can be traded into a robot? I don't. I think Carapax is an echo; a ghost. A human mind translated in codes into a metal body, an afterimage of the man, not truly him."

Although she hated that she cried, Felicity couldn't help the few tears that slipped down her cheeks. "I- I don't know-"

"Felicity, look at me," Oliver said, stepping closer. To show how much he believed in her, he put a hand on her currently metal arm, faith in her being in control showing as he looked her in the eyes. "He's a machine, not a man. You're saving the world. That's what you do."

She nodded twice, gathering her courage. Felicity turned towards Carapax. "Okay, Scarab. Let's do this."

Walking towards the robot, Felicity felt a kick of fear in her gut when it turned its gaze to her, knowing it could rip her apart. But the frankly scary, murderous voice of the scarab in her head promised she was in no danger, lifting its arm in less than a second to let off a series of short blasts at Carapax's vulnerable areas.

The robot fell to the ground, but before the scarab could take the final shot, Felicity reined it in. She forced it to walk to where Carapax fell. "You've lost," she told the robot. "Surrender now and live. We can help you."

"I'll never stop," a metal voice replied, the fluency gone; broken. "Not until Kord is dead, I'll never-"

The robot was cut off by the blast from Felicity's hands, circuits dead mid-word. Nobody threatened her friends.

But the blast knocked her back in a shower of sand, and Felicity Smoak was unconscious in the armour, leaving a smoking crater on the beach behind her.

"What I want to know is: what happened to the scarab?" Ted asked a day later, taking a pull of his beer.

All of them, Team Arrow, Beetle, Booster and Felicity, were sitting in the Bug, coasting over Lake Michigan. Ted had been working on a new camouflage feature, but had reversed it for now, so it looked to them like they were suspended in the air, nothing but the waves beneath them. It was beautiful.

Felicity shrugged, "I don't know exactly. I know the only reason I had as much control as I did was that it never bonded with me properly, and somehow – I don't think I was compatible. But I get the feeling it will be found one day; that it was supposed to be somewhere."

"I don't pity the kid who finds it," Oliver said. He kept getting a look on his face when the scarab was brought up in conversation, despite the fact they would all be dead without it. The turn of his smile went sour, and he broodily drank from his own beer. "That thing almost killed you."

"Hey, I'm fine," Felicity answered. She had a scar left over on her hand from where it had attached, but the pain itself like like a dream, not a memory. She held up her palm to show him there was no harm done. But Oliver, being Oliver, didn't look satisfied. Instead, she put her scarred palm in his scarred hand with a roll of her eyes, giving it a squeeze; he looked marginally happier. "I'm alive. We're alive. The world can sleep safety in its bed with a powerful team of super good-doers watching over it once again."

"Super Good-Dooers?" Booster snorted. "Nice name, Felicity."

"I've been going for the 'Anti-Carapax Cluster' in my head," Beetle added, smirking.

"The Super Seven."

"The Fantastic, Super Awesome, Just a Tad Good Looking and Spandex inspired Squad."

"Team just-here-to-help-out, nothing-to-see-here."

"The Amazing Beetle and his band of Buggettes."

"You always were a narcissistic bastard," Booster laughed at that last one, looking at Ted. "And I'm not your 'Buggette', thank you very much, pal."

There was laughter all around them, and it felt good. The sun was above them, the water below, while two teams came together. It wasn't a costume thing, they had initially planned on going to the beach so wore shorts and shirts – a hideous Hawaiian pattern in Ted's case, not that he cared.

"I'm just glad it's over," Booster said, finally breaking the companionable silence. "I don't know what we'd do without you, K."

"Cheers to that," Diggle agreed, and Felicity flushed as a few glasses clinked together, mingled with laughter.

Embarrassed, Felicity looked away as another conversation broke out. She had been sitting on the floor by the chair where Oliver sat, enjoying the feeling that she was flying, but not she turned to face him, putting her chin on his knee.

His eyes were only on her, and he even smiled when she looked up at him, saying softly, "Hey."

"Hey."

"Long day, huh?"

"Long year," she agreed.

"Well, my offer still stands," he said. When Felicity looked up at him, brows drawn together, he grinned brighter, remembering a conversation from what felt like a lifetime ago. "You can always talk to me about your day, Felicity."

A smile lit up her face as she remembered too, "Thank you, Oliver."

He had waited to say it, but couldn't stop the words tumbling from his mouth when she looked at him like that, the sun in her eyes. "Come back to Starling City."

She had expected this. Felicity sighed inwardly, "I can't, Oliver. I still have things to finish here." When he looked crestfallen, she squeezed his hands to regain his attention. "But, seeing as how Queen Industries is our business partner, I was thinking about asking Ted if I could become manager of our half of the Starling branch. It would mean splitting my time between here and there, and we'd have to work closely together – but I think we could make it work, don't you, Mr. Queen?"

Oliver's smile broke into a grin, disbelieve in his eyes. "I know we could, Miss Smoak."

"And if we, as co-managers, have to see more of each other, I'd say we'd better start by having dinner next weekend," Felicity suggested, coy smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Totally a business thing, of course."

"Of course," Oliver agreed, knowing it wasn't. Quickly, as their conversation had gone unnoticed by the others as they bickered over names and who had the coolest costume, he lifted their entwined hands to his lips and brushed her knuckle with them, putting them back in his lap and acting like nothing had happened a moment later.

Felicity went red, but shook her head at him playfully before they were distracted again.

"We do need a name, though, if we're going to team-up again," Roy said. "What do you think, Boss?"

"Uh, I don't know about teaming up," Oliver answered, pulling a face. "We fight crime, this isn't a club house."

"Oh come on, it's a little a club house!" Ted argued, grinning. "There's nothing wrong with having friends. You know, I think we need to team up. Maybe that way some humour will rub off on you."

"When hell freezes over, Kord."

"I'm getting toasty already," Ted grinned, like mud wouldn't stick to him. Felicity looked up and to her surprise; Oliver was smiling a little too. At Ted. Knowing they would never be best friends but glad the ice had cracked, Felicity looked back towards the group, her friends, and smiled.

"I've got an idea. How about the -"

A/N: look how I very carefully didn't use 'justice league' at the end, so dc can't sue my ass in the future! So did you guys like Felicity wearing the Beetle armour - in my head, it only covered one arm and her head, but looked like Jaime Reyes Beetle Armour - which incidentally is why she had to lose the scarab at the end. It was meant to be found by someone else, so I hope you guys like that easter egg. This is the last official chapter of the story, but there will be an epilogue too. And maybe an alternate, sadder epilogue I considered, but I wanted to end this story happily. I hope you're all satisfied with the ending.

P.S - it would make my life if someone drew Felicity in the Beetle armour for me, and I would link it/you on my blog. keystonecomet on tumblr, message me.