Thea's high heels sounded against the hard wood floors. If something could be foreign and familiar at the same time, these clicks, these taps – they would be a whole lot easier to file away. It was a feeling that Oliver had been experiencing since he returned home from the island and yet it was still an emotion he struggled to define.
He remembered his mother and his sister – the Moira Queen and Thea that he had left in Starling City when he boarded the Gambit. While he had vivid memories of Moira's small yet distinctive wave when parting, the lines around her mouth after he had been arrested for his most recent bout of shenanigans, or the way her fingers played over one another when she was nervous – they were actions that he no longer felt belonged to him. He remembered Thea's bubbling laugh and the way her eyes flew to him in adoration every time he came home – but her laugh had stiffened and her eyes were too heavy with burden. Five years had distanced him from the mundane aspects of his pre-island life. Those same smiles and giggles that were once so well-known had changed; they were still there, yes, but they were only echoes of what he remembered.
The past five years had taken away so much of his first eighteen. Starling City – his home – didn't feel familiar anymore. It was like waking from a coma. He remembered the structure and details of his life, but he felt like a stranger trying to step into a role that wasn't his. He was the understudy in his own life and had never bothered to learn the lines.
Oliver had adjusted to his mixed feelings of familiarity and foreignness by accepting his life for what it was now while constantly having to remind himself that it wasn't the one he had left behind.
It was standing in the dark foyer with Felicity, whispering words to her – confessions he told himself were fabricated as a bid to draw Slade out – that Oliver started realizing how scared he was. He'd known what Felicity meant to him, of course, but it was only now that he was beginning to feel the acute gravity of that verbal admission.
She never made him feel torn. While the rest of the world viewed him as two separate people, the Oliver he had been before the island and the Oliver he was now, Felicity accepted that he was the same Oliver - he had just grown and changed along the way. She knew all his secrets, knew him better than probably anyone else, and yet she never expected him to be something he wasn't. He never had to prove himself to her. She never looked at him like he had let her down – even when he had. She knew how flawed he was, yet refused to believe that he was broken; broken was something that didn't work, that needed to be fixed. He was flawed, but she owned her own manual - and he was pretty sure she authored it.
To her he was the TV that you had to hit twice on the left side to get rid of the static; the door that you had to push exactly 18 inches below the handle to make it open; the faucet that dripped until you turned the cold water tap ever so slightly towards the on position; the wobbly table that just needed a few napkins to boost its tired leg every once in awhile; the standard car that didn't like starting all the time – but if you pushed it fast enough or parked on a hill you could always coax it into first. And that's why she always looked at him like he was a hero. She knew he was good, he just needed that hand on his back guiding him the right way sometimes. He wasn't broken. And even despite his billions, in her eyes he was Bruce Springsteen's 'Jack of All Trades.' It was his deft fingers smoothing over the wrinkles, his strength sanding down the imperfections, his determination doing the repairing, and his unshakable integrity keeping them all going.
"Get them out of here!" Felicity hears Oliver slowly, sadly and precisely demand of Sara. She wonders if they will be the last words she'll ever hear him breathe.
Air is only entering her chest in short puffs, her vision is beginning to blur. Despite her night of fear – the ice that filled her chest from Isabel's glare of hate, the very true realization that they were being hunted by Mirakiru-ed soldiers, the sharp pain biting through her forehead when she regained consciousness in Oliver's arms, the confusion that eeked through her mind being on the receiving end of Oliver's charade, finding the willpower to trust Oliver and wait for Slade to take her, the brutality and hatred that radiated through Slade's touch, her mind trying to reason whether she hoped Oliver would or wouldn't return for her, the metallic chill of the blade on her neck, and the conviction that she had to find the strength to inject Slade with the cure – even with that whirlwind of fear, she hasn't felt as cold or scared as she does in that moment. Her body isn't responding.
Too far away, his blue eyes are sinking into her – it's not anger or even fear – he's pleading with her. And then just like that his gaze is gone, he is gone, as something comes between them, completely blocking him from her sight.
She feels the rise and fall of movement, but she knows it's not her legs exerting the effort. The arms curled around her body, while solid and muscular, aren't Oliver's. She tells herself that it is a deduction born from the fact that these arms aren't warm enough, they're not holding her tight enough – but she knows it's a conclusion reached because Oliver isn't with them.
Nyssa's talking to her, she sees her lips moving, but there are no words. Everything's quiet. She's numb. Glancing back towards the hallway they have just run through – or more accurately, the hallway that Nyssa carried her through – she knows the tears that she's been holding back are now slipping down her cheeks. Looking down at her with softer eyes than Felicity ever imagined Nyssa capable of, she is being pulled back into the Assasin's chest and the hallway is gone. The building is gone.
Nyssa places her softly on a curb, dropping her legs down to the the cold pavement before supporting her lower back and neck until she's confident that Felicity can hold herself up on her own. She feels like a child. Her dark, muted trance is broken just long enough to grab Nyssa's retreating hand. Her voice is gone and instead of the sincere thank you she intended to speak, only a strangled whisper leaves her lips. Nyssa gives her the same emotional look from the hallway, squeezes her hand and continues her retreat.
She doesn't know how long it's been since they abandoned Oliver, leaving him alone with Slade. 'Abandoned' – she can't swallow. She knows she has whispered it out loud when Sara is kneeling in front of her, drawing her into a hug.
"Felicity – we didn't abandon him. He told us to leave, he needed us to leave." She pauses, and Felicity nods her head an inch, her ponytail swinging down over her shoulder.
Laurel is crying somewhere to their left, but Sara is still holding tight to Felicity. And she's whispering now, voice rough with tears, "He needed to fight Slade, Felicity. He needed to prove to himself, what you and I already know – that he is nothing like Slade... He needed to do it alone. If we had stayed he would have been fighting as a means to protect us and that wouldn't have been fair to him. This is about Oliver defeating an evil that he thinks he created, it's not about the vigilante defeating another enemy of this city."
Felicity is nodding again, oxygen is finally flowing in a more regular pattern. With a small smile and a squeeze, Sara is standing.
"You, of everyone in his life, need to have faith in him." Sara doesn't say it in an accusatory or cutting tone. It's more like a comforting, personal moment shared between just the two of them – Sara, the women who has been through hell, has had her identity demeaned, demolished, re-fabricated, and shattered repeatedly, is reminding Felicity to hold onto hers. A twelve word sentence and Sara has managed to somehow repair the cracks that have been forming and spider-ing at her core. Was there anything this woman couldn't do?
Her senses are starting to return and for the first time she can see the moon and stars, typically drowned by the noise and lights of the city, rolling on the stretch of dark water in front of her. She's walking toward the edge of the pier on legs that feel much stronger and surer than she had expected. Apparently Nyssa and Sara had had the same thought as both of them were standing, ready to catch her if she stumbled.
"I'm good, well maybe not good – we'll call it improved, - but certainly mobile without the need of wheelchairs, crutches, canes, handrails, shoulders, hands or any other device or body part." Sara's smile is threatening to turn into a laugh before Felicity shrugs her shoulder and continues. "Just saying... if you remind a rambling, 'overly-active-minded' girl like me to be herself, you should probably prepare for a good number of rambles over the course of the next hour." And with that she confidently walks over to the edge of the pier, only tripping once over a slightly raised plank on the boardwalk. She considers it an accomplishment.
Leaning on the banister in front of her she looks around. The smell of ash and fire are lingering in the heavy air of night, and she swears she can hear stillness. There's parts of the city still on fire or smoking, but everything else is eerily devoid of life. She's counting her breaths, trying to keep them as slow and as even as possible. The whole endeavor is failed and forgotten as her phone starts quietly singing in her pocket, and she hopes that no one else can hear it.
The lyrics of 99 Red Balloons are pouring out of her phone and she forgets, for just a minute, everything that is going on around her. She lets her mind draw her back to the foundry only weeks ago when she had set the ringtone for Roy.
"Dig and Oliver have their own ringtones. When am I 'team' enough to get one?"
"Keep pouting – really – it's a good look on you," Felicity zings over her shoulder, offering up an overly wide smile to Roy because she knows it will only irk him further. She's at her desk. Roy has just jumped off the salmon ladder; funny really, it doesn't have the same effect on her when it's not Oliver's body tightening in front of her.
If it were Oliver's shirtless, sweaty, heaving chest... (Really? Her mind needs to take the shortest, fastest route to 'Totally Inappropriate, Never Happening Lane' every second of the day?) she would have changed his ringtone to 'It's a Small World' without a second thought and not cared when the obnoxious, overly-sweetened voices came through her phone 24 times a day – give or take.
But this was Roy – and she was totally going to have fun with this. "And what would your ringtone be, Roy," she asks as flatly as she can manage.
Digg's smirking at her from across the mats. After months of spending nearly every waking hour within feet of her, he can read her tells. He knows she's just having some fun with the kid. If Roy had asked nicely, and without the attitude that accompanied everything that left his mouth, she gladly would have found something suitable for him. But now? Let the humor ensue.
"99 Bottles of Beer on the wall? Rocky style – Eye of the Tiger? No – No – I got it. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown?" she goads innocently.
"I hear he's the baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than old King Kong. And meaner than a Junkyard dog," Digg calls from across the room. "But maybe that part about looking like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone, is more applicable," Digg continues. "Personally, I think it's a good pick," he finishes, emphatically gesturing to himself.
Oliver is chuckling next to Digg now – and if you look close enough there is actually steam exiting Roy's ears – or maybe the thought is just too perfect to pass over.
To everyone's surprise Roy takes a deep breath and calmly responds. Leaning conspiratorially over Felicity, but without ever taking his eyes off of Oliver's, Roy scratches his chin and scrunches his mouth to the side, thinking, before finally opening his mouth. "I was thinking more along the lines of the Divinyls, 'I Touch Myself.' It's Roy's turn to grin.
The amusement that had been on Oliver's face slowly slips off. He's balling his hands into fists, jaw tightening, eyes burning into Roy. Digg firmly places his hand on Oliver's shoulder before he can lunge across the foundry and wrap his hands around Roy's neck.
Felicity, trying to cool the tension in the room," whirls her chair around. "I got it! Since I can't think of any 'I'm a young, ignorant donkey songs' off the top of my head, I'm setting you to 'Barbie Girl.'
"Whatever," Roy huffs. "Don't you all go getting your panties in a bunch. It was a joke, I didn't kick a freaking dog," and with that Roy is taking the stairs two at a time out of the foundry.
Felicity never made Roy's ringtone "Barbie Girl." She decided on "99 Red Balloons" instead, for as simple of reasons as red was the color she always associated with Roy and because she just liked the song.
She never thought it would be so relevant... "It's all over and I'm standing pretty in the dust that was a city. If I could find a souvenir just to prove the world was here..."
She answers right before the phone goes to voicemail.
"Felicity.." a tight, saddened voice is choking through her phone, before she even realizes she has answered it. "Roy? Roy – where are you? Are you okay?"
"It's Thea."
"Oh my God, Roy. Oh my God..." All the tears, anger, sadness, fear that Sara had talked out of her are threatening to squeeze the oxygen out of her lungs again.
"No! Felicity stop! It's not like that. She's just gone. She decided that today – with super-strength soldiers murdering and destroying, Slade still trying to hurt Oliver," he paused for a second, but found it in him to continue, "and oh – I forgot, Argus trying to blow up the city and everyone in it. Today, today, to-to-today just sounded like it would be a good day to play the teenage girl and take off."
The phone is quiet for a minute, both of them calculating and weighing options, before Roy finally starts again. Sadder this time, the chipping facetiousness of his last rant missing now, he goes on. "What was she thinking, Felicity? What was she thinking" and as an afterthought, he adds, "she left a note."
Silence.
"She told me that she didn't trust me – didn't trust anyone. She said that she was a different Thea Queen – that the world had destroyed the other one with lies and manipulation. Felicity...," he's pleading now, "I need to do something. I need you to help me."
Her voice is far more grounded and confident than she feels, "Listen Roy, I'm on a pier," she's surveying everything around her when Sarah yells out "Pier 6."
"I'm on Pier 6, Roy. You need to come get me. All I have is my phone, and I don't know what the communication towers are like right now, but I'm going to try and trace Thea's cell. She can't have gotten too far..." She's walking back towards the concerned faces on the curb, when Roy answers her.
"In case I forget to tell you later, or if I forget ever again, thank you Felicity." With a deep sigh he continues "I talked to Digg, he's with Lyla – he's been trying to keep me updated." Pause. "We're going to get Oliver back. We're getting everyone back." He doesn't wait for her to respond, "I'm on my way."
She's bring the phone away from her ear when he starts again. "Oh, and Felicity... I need to bring the bike. There's too much debris and too many obstacles to get around any other way."
There's another pause before she answers. "Roy, I know you can't see me right now, but just so you know, I'm wearing my 'Please-just-shoot-me-now-face' – just as fair warning. Bring me a helmet. And maybe some peppermint schnapps or something, because I'm so ready to let go of this day."
She earns herself a small laugh, "I'm glad to know that we're living through Armegeddon and you still find it in you to ramble. Be there in 10."
"Fantastic," Felicity mumbles. She's typing furiously into her phone trying to get coordinates on Thea before Roy gets to her. Because trying to locate someone who doesn't want to be found using only a cell isn't hard enough as it is – let's add a swerving, bumping bike, an inexperienced driver, obstacle laden streets, and my nerves – just for shits and giggles. Maybe we could stumble upon some banana peels... and Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach. It will be just like Mario Kart, except real...'
Sara is smiling, Nyssa is smirking, and Laurel is staring blankly at her. "That was all out loud, wasn't it?" No one answers. No one needs to.
Her phone beeps in her hand again. "And we got her. I'm just too good at this." Eyes are back on her. "Out loud again, huh?"
"Sara," Felicity is pulling her over to the side quietly, "I need to go with Roy. Thea took off on him and he's worried she's going to do something reckless. I've traced her to Old Airport Rd." Felicity chokes out the next sentence in a barely audible voice. "As much as I need to stay – to see him, he needs me to do this more, I need to do this more – I owe him that much."
Felicity's shaking her head, declining Sara's offer before she can even finish putting it into words. "I'll be with Roy, he'll keep us safe."
A motorcycle is whizzing somewhere in the distance and Felicity offers Sara another smile before adding "I'm thinking if my biggest concern is Roy's driving ability, well... let's just say I take that as a good sign.
Before she can finish the word 'sign,' Roy is fishtailing to a stop in front the four girls and the rest of the League of Assassins. "See what I mean?! I just feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy – where's my helmet," Felicity yells to Roy before hugging Sara, stopping to thank Nyssa, and offering Laurel a saddened smile.
Roy is handing Felicity her helmet and pulling her into a hug in one fluid motion. "I found her," she smiles to him as he starts doing up the buckle on her helmet. After giving him directions, complete with waves and arm movements for emphasis, she's swinging her leg over the bike and positioning her hips squarely behind him. Felicity secures her phone, squeezes her knees into Roy's sides and yells one last time back to Sara.
"Tell him we'll meet him at the mansion," and she clings to the words, rolling them around in her mouth because she can't even begin to consider the alternative. With that they're speeding away.