On Borrowed Time

17. What is it?

PART TWO: BREAKOUT

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: WHAT IS IT?

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TEAM ARROW, STARLING , USA

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"Let me get this straight, I was out for three hours and you all did what now?" Diggle asked the pacing Felicity. They sat in the basement still, though the club had closed hours before and dawn had already fallen upon their beloved city.

"Dean and Sam summoned an angel to inquire -on a whim, I might add- if other underworlds exist," Felicity explained, but the furrow in her brow and her uneasy pacing made Oliver sure that she hadn't quite wrapped her head around it either.

"And they do," Oliver interjected, "but what I don't understand is why we needed to know about Hades?"

"Because," Dean piped up easily from his closed position against the steal table, "if we do get to the cage before Crowley we'll still have to deal with Adam. Unfortunately for us, brother isn't the only one to call the cage home and you can bet your bottom dollar that the minute we pop that top Lucifer will be gone," Dean finished pointedly.

"And we don't want to unleash the apocalypse," Felicity reminded him.

"Again," Sam added rather offhandedly and Oliver stared at the trio as if suddenly seeing the resemblance between them for the first time. Diggle looked to Oliver in disbelief and he wondered if he was seeing the same thing. The three of them seemed to be completely and utterly on the same brainwave, where Diggle and Oliver sat on the outside in confusion.

"Where's Charlie?" he suddenly asked, realizing that the girl hadn't been in on the Winchester telepathy. He didn't know how he had missed it earlier.

"We sent her to the bunker," Dean said with a shrug, "she's looking into some mythologies for us."

"How did you know what the angel would say?" Diggle wondered, staring at the scorched marks of the basement floor. Sam was the one to answer though and he did it with a shrug.

"We didn't, but a lead's a lead no matter how small. Felicity started asking, we started searching," he explained, giving Felicity a look of pride. "We don't have time to wait and there was no reason to say it wasn't true, we face all kinds of monsters on a daily basis."

Felicity dropped into her chair and turned her focus onto the computer and it was only a matter of moments before she was leaned in close and her fingers navigating her way around who knew what. Oliver assessed Dean as he watched his sister, a sad look on his face and a defeated slump to his shoulders that he hadn't noticed before. Maybe the Winchesters did have hearts after all, he thought and couldn't help the small smirk that twitched at the corner of his lips. Yet all at once it made his own heart ache with sadness - time was moving too fast.

His phone rang and he frowned, digging it out of his pocket with a look of confusion on his features. The regular people that would call him were all sitting in the basement with him now. Hi first sense was surprise and then panic began to well up in his chest as he looked at the name gracing his screen - Thea. Ignoring the stares he answered it.

"Thea?" He demanded, but that was all it took for them to turn back to their conversation. Felicity's momentary glance returned to the screens. Diggle compared injuries with the Winchesters and it was almost as if they had been a team since the beginning. The way he watched them all fall into an ease around each other - a far cry from their first encounters.

"Are you at Verdant?" he frowned and glanced around the room as if expecting to see something out of place around them. "I just caught some guy climbing the fire exit and he insists he knows you- dark hair, blue eyes, kind of geeky looking?" he listened to his sister pull away from the phone and ask a question to the person in the background. "Says his name is Barry?"