Hey there.
So I set out to write a Captain Canary fic set in Doomworld and I ended up veering into territory that loosely follows Greek mythology (Believe me, I have no idea how this happened) and is filled with a lot of angst.
There is a Bellamy Blake line in here, so that's not mine. And I don't own Legends of Tomorrow, in case you were wondering.
This is a format that I have never written in before so forgive me if it feels weird.
Enjoy!
First there was Chaos.
Sara Lance doesn't remember Star City as anything other than a jungle of madness, confusion and terror. It has always been like this and always will be and yet there is a memory that nudges at her subconscious and reminds her of a Star City that was beautiful and brilliant and full of life; that was home.
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She doesn't know what to make of that broken piece of discordant memory. She doesn't even know if it's a memory or her mind playing tricks on her and making her believe what she wants to believe.
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Her mind seems to do that a lot these days: conjures pictures and stories and feeds them to her. And she devours the lies because they don't hurt as much as the truth does.
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The truth is she is an assassin and she kills mindlessly and mercilessly for the man who dictates the rule of the city. Killing feels familiar to her, almost like second nature. She doesn't know where she gets it from but she despises it.
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She loathes it because the memories that nudge her tell her a different story. They tell her tales where she was a hero in the light, a savior and a protector, who had defeated her demons, so much more than an assassin who didn't know how to stop killing.
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Every week there is a new person to be killed, a new face to be erased, a new story to be stopped from writing itself and a new ghost to haunt her at night when the world sleeps around her.
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She has a partner- a friend perhaps- who does the killing with her. But they never talk about the lives they end, as if those lives never mattered and always belonged to Damien Darhk. She wants to ask Amaya if watching a person stop breathing right in front of her eyes hurts just as bad but she can never work up her courage to voice the atrocities she commits.
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Because words once spoken are set in stone, indelibly inked, and can never be erased no matter how hard one tries.
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She hides from these words and seeks protection from their bilious truth because underneath the garb she dons of being an intrepid killer, she is a scared little girl who is lost in the world and has no way of returning home.
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Home doesn't exist, never has.
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The only thing that exists is violence and a living death. They surround her and threaten to swallow her despite the brave fight she puts up against its murky waters.
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She has miraculously managed to hold on to her conscience despite the hell she lives in. And on nights when she has to scrub off the blood of another from her hands, she regrets holding on to the one thing that makes her human because in a world like hers there is no place for the weak.
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To be human is to be weak.
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And so she stops fighting against the violence, stops resisting the living death, stops seeking comfort in the lies that her mind crafts, shuts down the memories that make her want to be better and lets the darkness engorge her.
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The darkness is beautiful and intoxicating and she wants to stay in its deathly arms.
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She wants to be strong, wants to be a little less human.
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Just like that, the little girl who was scared and lost in this monstrous world vanishes and she finally becomes what she has always pretended to be: a killer with a stone cold heart.
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When her conscience starts to wander away from her, she does not even try to desperately cling on to it. She lets it go, like she should have done a long time ago.
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But why does it feel so weak to be strong?
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It's chaos in her mind; a war that she does not remember starting rages on. She does not know who she is or who she wants to be or who she needs to be.
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Maybe she is nothing.
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Maybe nothing is everything and everything is nothing.
Then emerged Eros.
Darhk has many associates but no one looks at her in a way Leonard Snart does. She cannot decide whether that's a good thing or not.
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His eyes are confident and observant and they caress her body carefully, pausing at times and marveling and appreciating before turning away, as if nothing happened in the first place.
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It's strange and inexplicable but she starts to enjoy the attention she gets from him. And before long she starts playing the game he started and sometimes finds herself winning.
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The rules are simple: there aren't any.
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He starts it sometimes and she starts it the other times. He watches her and she watches him and they make sure no one else watches them.
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It's dangerous and unpredictable. She doesn't even know what she is getting herself into but she likes the thrill of it, likes to know that someone finds her intriguing enough to look.
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She feels a little more than nothing these days.
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What she likes the most about this little game of theirs is that sometimes, just sometimes, their eyes meet and then it doesn't feel like a game anymore.
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It knocks the air out of her lungs and makes her heart race and sets her skin on fire. It reminds her to feel and to be human and to be weak.
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This time it feels so strong to be weak.
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On good days, the conscience she had lost comes back to her and she starts to regret the actions she used to regret once upon a time till the world convinced her to accept and acquiesce their gore and hideousness.
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Why does it feel so strong to be weak?
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It's an irony, really. A career criminal triumphs over the chaos and confusion and makes her want to be better.
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But then again, two wrongs do make a right.
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For all their staring and gazing and watching, they are awfully alien strangers. They have never had a conversation with words and she starts wondering why it has to be that way.
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And then Darhk asks her to kill him.
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She finds him in one of the many warehouses of Central City that he uses as shelters. She is stupid to think she will walk into his territory and go unnoticed and before she knows it she is pressed against a wall with his cold gun holding her in place.
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"Did your dimwit boss actually think he could kill me in my own city?" He says it calmly, expression unperturbed and she wonders if he already knows that she won't let the knives tucked into the leather of her suit so much as scratch him.
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Truth is, she is not ready to kill Leonard Snart. She never will be.
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"I wasn't going to kill you," she manages to tell him from the tiny space between the wall and him. He hovers above her, the cold gun pressed againt her stomach. She can feel his breath on her face and she is certain that he can hear her heart drum thunderously in her chest. His eyes never leave hers and slowly yet steadily he strips her of all her weapons.
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Maybe it's her mind playing tricks again but she feels his hands deliberately linger on her skin as he pries her favorite knife from the waistband of her suit.
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He has her cornered and there is nothing she can do about it. She doesn't want to either.
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"What exactly were you planning to do then, Sara?" He drawls out her name and she shudders. The question is a challenge and she has never been someone to back off from challenges.
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She presses herself closer to him and takes his lips into hers. The gun falls to the ground with a thud and he gathers her in his arms without faltering for a moment.
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Turns out his warehouse has a sofa and they make full use of it.
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Somewhere in between the fervent lovemaking, he tells her, "That tone you adopt in front of your dimwit boss fools no one."
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Before they return to Star City, they make it a point to learn each other's scars and moles and stories. Learn and relearn and relearn.
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When he notices her face grow paler and lose all its color, he says, "I'll take care of Darhk."
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He does and Damien Darhk never attempts to remove Leonard Snart out of his way ever again.
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It stays a one-off thing for a good few months but it means so much more to her conflicted heart and ravaged mind.
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She feels a lot more than nothing now.
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She returns home after killing yet another man with tears streaming down her face and she finds him inside her apartment, waiting for her in the dark.
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"How'd you get in?" she hisses and immediately realizes how ridiculous a question that is when he raises his eyebrows in reply. She dissolves into tears after that and he holds her steady as she washes her knives clean.
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She kisses him out of desperation this time. "I need to feel something else," she whispers, distraught and broken.
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He complies.
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"Who we are and who we need to be to survive are two very different things," he tells her as he holds her in his arms in their afterglow.
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A home she has never known starts to exist after that night.
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It's not about flowers and dinners for them. Obviously it isn't. It's about liaisons in warehouses and keeping each other grounded and anchored in a world painted with terror and danger.
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It's also about watching each other when no one else is looking.
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She understands why it feels so strong to be weak. It has to do with baring your soul to someone and a little something called love.
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She will never admit that though.
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She would have had she known what was coming.
It ended with Erebus.
And then a gun is fired at her and it restores her memories. She understands the discordant memories and understands why Star City felt like more than a jungle of madness, confusion and terror.
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She also understands that Sara Lance and Leonard Snart always gravitate towards each other no matter what universe they inhabit. And the universe always conspires to tear them apart and keep them as far away from each other as it possibly can.
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The memories shroud her in darkness. This is not the darkness of before; not the darkness that made her let go of her humanity. This darkness is of ignorance and uncertainty: it's of knowing and yet not knowing. Unlike the last time, she now wants to wriggle out of its deathly arms.
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She scampers for the light but there is none to be found. This world has never had any light.
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And when it is all over after sacrifices and losses and heartbreak, the home that had barely started to exist vanishes again.
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Maybe she is nothing.
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Maybe nothing is everything and everything is nothing.