In Arrow 3x03, "Corto Maltese," after Laurel tries to fight crime without proper training and gets beaten up, she goes to Oliver for help, explaining that this is how she needs to mourn Sara's death, but he flatly refuses to train her, saying, "I'm sorry, but I can't. And even if I could, Sara would never forgive me." I've always thought that was such a devastating line, and with Laurel's death in Season 4, the basic concept of that quote inspired this.

The normal notes: Characters, environments, etc. belong to the CW. The continuity used is everything up to and including Arrow 4x19, "Canary Cry," and DC's Legends of Tomorrow 1x13, "Leviathan." This is written purely for fun. I appreciate everyone who gives my stories a chance just by reading them.

…

"Sara…"

It was the only word she let him utter before slamming her fist into his face. The Bunker echoed with the sound of Oliver's body slumping to the ground, his head hitting the floor, but that was only the beginning. Her face, a face that had shown both genuine kindness and deadly fury over both of her lifetimes, was a mask of cold emptiness. Before Oliver could react, Sara was kneeling over him, pulling back her fist for another blow.

"It's your fault," she said, and despite her stoic exterior, she couldn't stop the tiny tremble in her voice. "She's dead because of you." Her fist flew again, bashing into Oliver's face, but he just turned to face her, looking straight into her eyes. Why wasn't he defending himself? She couldn't stand it. So she hit him again. And again. And again.

Oliver was supposed to watch Laurel's back. Who else was going to? John Constantine's restitution may have restored Sara's soul all those months ago, but her mind had still been too hopelessly muddled to help anyone, her world too nonsensical for her to comprehend. Ra's al Ghul was dead? Laurel was fighting crime as the "Black" Canary now? Another megalomaniac was threatening Starling…no, Star City? Even the name of her home had changed. Her only thought at the time was to get away, and for months, she strove to find herself, only dimly aware of what was happening in her city. She knew Laurel had taken to the streets to fight crime, but she believed that Oliver wouldn't let her into any real danger. She was wrong.

"Sara, stop!" She heard heavy footsteps as Diggle rushed forward, grabbing her arm, trying to stop her beatdown. In a blink, Sara was on her feet again, twisting out of his grasp and sending him into a column of the Bunker with a swift kick to his sternum. She snatched Oliver's bow off a table and an arrow, seemingly at random, and let it fly. The arrow disintegrated in midair, and a moment later Diggle was pinned to the column by a mess of polymer cables.

She moved back to face Oliver, but Diggle burst out, "It's not his fault! It's mine. I trusted the wrong person. That's why Laurel's dead!"

The mere suggestion that this wasn't Oliver's fault was enough to crack Sara's fragile exterior. This all started with him. She needed to blame him. She hurled the bow into a nearby glass case, shattering it. "Did you let her become the Black Canary?" she screamed at Diggle, pointing at him. "Were you the one who let her into this life? Our life?" Her control was gone, but she didn't care. She couldn't. Her rage and pain consumed her in a way her bloodlust never had. "No," she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. "It was you," she said, turning her head to face Oliver.

Oliver hadn't gotten to his feet. His lip was swollen. Blood trickled down out of one of his nostrils. There was a nasty cut over his right eye, and yet he just kept looking at her with those eyes. It just made her hate him more, and so knowing Oliver better than most, she reached deep to find ways to cut him. "This was always your crusade," she continued, accusingly. "This was always your messed up, self-indulgent crusade for validation, or redemption, or whatever crap you want to call it. And for what? You haven't saved this city. You couldn't even save your own family," she added icily. Sara saw his throat tremble, knew the unspoken shot about his mother had landed, and she was annoyed to discover that hurting him wasn't making her feel better. She pressed on. "I went along with your whole charade because I'm just as damaged as you are. But her?"

Sara knelt over Oliver again, balling his shirt in her left hand but not really seeing what she was doing. Instead, she remembered how much Laurel had complained about her pet canary when they were little kids, loudly wishing it would shut up, but when she thought Sara wasn't watching, she'd sneak her fingers into the cage to pet it affectionately. How she picked her way along the nasty floor of Oblivion, the bar Sara tended in college, and stayed until closing because she knew Sara was having a rough time lately and needed someone to talk to. How often they had fought, like sisters do, over the stupidest things, including over Oliver, of all people, and she hurt even more at the thought of what a waste that all was. "She was a district attorney. She had a good life, but you let her choose our life. You could have stopped her, and you didn't. Why didn't you stop her?"

"It wasn't Oliver's call. He wouldn't train her, so she went to Ted Grant, and then to Nyssa. Sara, you know that," Diggle implored.

"I was dead, but you could have made her listen," Sara accused, ignoring Diggle and drawing back her right fist, throbbing and bleeding though it was from the many punches she'd already landed. "You loved her. You should have stopped her!" She tensed her body to strike.

"Laurel," Oliver began, and the sound of his voice, and the first word he had spoken since she clocked him, made her pause. "Laurel was destroyed, losing you again. Her life was shattered, and she couldn't find a way forward without doing something." Oliver paused, shutting his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, they were filling with tears. "I knew you would never forgive me if I trained her, but she had to honor your memory, for her sake as much as anyone else's. So she went off on her own and became the Black Canary. To remember you. To show how much she loved you."

A few seconds passed, Oliver boring into Sara's eyes, and then her body sagged, knowing that what Oliver said was true even though Laurel had never admitted to her quite how deeply lost she had been after Sara's death. With that pain of acceptance, Sara realized that Oliver's eyes bothered her because they reflected the pain she had seen in the mirror after she had received the news from her father. Laurel was dead. Her big sister was dead.

"I didn't get to say goodbye," she whispered, eyes finally brimming with tears. "She took me to the Pit, gave me my life back, and I can't even tell her I love her one more time." Nyssa had destroyed the Pit, and Rip had gently told her, in Time Master jargon that was as absolute as it was confusing, that Laurel's timeline had "set," and was therefore immutable. Laurel had moved heaven and earth to bring Sara back to life, and all she could do in return was mourn.

Sara's body pitched forward, and she buried her fists and face into Oliver's chest, his arms wrapping around her as her crying turned into wrenching sobs that tore at her chest and her heart. All her identities washed away in that moment. She was not the White Canary. Not the Girl Who Came Back from the Dead. Not Ta-er Al-Safer. Now, she was just a sister who felt more alone now than the moment she had died.