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Author's Note: So this week's episode was extremely emotionally traumatic. But I think it was also one of the very best episodes the show has done with some of the best performances I've seen by that cast. It was a very moving tribute to my favorite character. At the end of the episode there is a small montage showing each of the five characters immediately affected by Sara's death. I really wanted to do my own sort of tribute to Sara, and today when I was listening to "You Found Me" by The Fray this piece started putting itself together in my head. I wrote this to provide a slightly more in depth look at where each of those five characters is emotionally at the end of the episode. Hopefully I did them all justice. Fair warning, some parts of this may require Kleenex. You have been warned.
On the Corner of First and Amistad
The house is quiet when John gets home. He takes off his shoes and creeps quietly down the hallway, careful to avoid the creaky spots in the floor. There is no light under their bedroom door, which means Lyla has already gone to bed. John walks silently past the door and down toward the nursery to check on his baby girl just as he does every night.
The lamp is still on in the nursery. For some reason little Sara seems to sleep better with it on. But tonight John steps over to the crib to find her still awake. She makes a little noise as his face comes into view and it causes a smile to form on his face.
"Hey, baby girl," he says quietly.
He reaches down into the crib and places his hand on little Sara's stomach so he can rock her back and forth. He's discovered quite by accident that the motion seems to relax her enough that she goes to sleep faster. And the sight of her looking up at him with those big, trusting eyes is enough to begin to mend his bruised and battered heart.
As he looks down at his precious little girl, he finds himself thinking about her namesake. It's been a hard three days since Sara died. She might have only been a part of the Arrow team for a few months before her return to the League, but she worked her way into John's heart just the same. She was a comrade in arms, someone he could always trust to have his back. Someone who supported Oliver while still being willing to tell him the blunt truth, who bantered with Roy while still teaching him, who protected their innocent Felicity however she could. She was a girl after his own heart in so many ways. And her smile… Man, the twinkle in her eyes could light up a room. And the sound of she and Felicity laughing together over some private joke was enough to fix any bad day. He's going to miss that sound.
He meant what he said to Oliver. Sara was family. And she will be deeply missed. He doesn't pretend to understand why God would let her die like this, why he would allow her to be ripped away from her family once again. Maybe he'll never know. But just because she's dead, doesn't mean she's gone. Like he told Laurel, Sara will be remembered. Someday, when his little girl is old enough, he's going to tell her stories about a woman in a black mask who protected the defenseless. Stories about an assassin who saved people and a woman who refused to let the world break her. He can see his little girl now running around in a black cape and a paper mask calling herself the Canary. Sara Lance is going to be her hero. He'll make sure of that. And he can't imagine her having a better one.
He has a feeling Sara would like the idea of being someone's hero.
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Roy leans back against the wall of Verdant and stares down at his phone. A picture of he and Thea still serves as his wallpaper. As much as it pains him to look at the image, he can't bring himself to change it.
He hasn't tried to contact Thea since she left. He keeps hoping she just needs space and one day he'll walk into Verdant to find her standing there. But he knows in his heart that isn't the case. She's gone, and it's his fault.
Even so, he very nearly called her after leaving Verdant. He needs her right now. Sara's death is wreaking havoc with everyone, including him. With the Mirakuru complications and then his induced coma, he didn't really get to spend a lot of time with Sara before she left for the League. But in that short time she managed to make a definite impact on him. Up until the siege, Oliver had been more of a mentor to him, someone to look up to from a distance. But Sara had been on his level somehow. Sure, she had taught him things. She had been more than willing to give him pointers on anything he asked about. But she had also treated him like a kid brother, messing with his hair and teasing him about his relationship with Thea.
He remembers the day after their break-up he had completely destroyed one of the punching bags in an effort to get his emotions out. He had sat down in a chair to unwrap his hands and Sara had come into the lair. She hadn't said a word to him about the spilled sand all over the floor. Instead she had just set down a pint of Rocky Road and a plastic spoon on the table beside him.
"What's this?" he'd asked.
"I know it seems like a girl thing," Sara had told him, "but trust me. It helps."
Then she had turned around and gone back upstairs to take inventory of the stock room. It had been such a simple gesture, but it had spoken volumes to Roy. Now, as he replays that scene in his mind, he wishes there had been more time to get to know Sara.
It's even worse for the others. Felicity's a wreck. She and Sara had gotten close so fast it blew his mind. Her death has crushed the optimistic IT girl, and it breaks Roy's heart. Diggle's feeling the loss just like the rest of them, but he also seems to have found a way to deal. He always has been the most stable of the bunch. Laurel's taking it hard, of course. Sara was her sister. Roy doesn't know her very well, but he gets the feeling that Sara's death has lit a fire inside of her. He bets they're going to be seeing a lot more of her once she finishes grieving.
The worst, however, is Oliver. When Roy left, he was sitting on a chair staring at the table where Laurel had first laid Sara's body. It's as if all of the light has gone out of his eyes now. He's turned into an empty shell, and Roy doesn't know how to help him.
Which is why he almost called Thea. She needs to come home. Maybe she could get through to Oliver. Roy is halfway through dialing her number before he realizes that even if he does call and somehow she does answer, he won't be able to tell her what happened. He can't tell her how Sara died because he can't explain about her connections to the League or to the Arrow. And he certainly can't tell her Oliver's secret. All he can say is that Oliver needs her, and after how many calls his mentor has made, it's become pretty clear to Roy that Thea doesn't consider that a good enough to come home.
This is why Thea left in the first place, he reminds himself. Because he couldn't tell her the truth. Because his secrets destroyed their relationship. Even if she does come back, that won't change. He can't tell her who he is or what he does at night. Maybe she was right to leave. She deserves better than a loser like him who can't even tell her the truth.
He takes one last look down at her smiling face on his phone, trying to ignore the burning in his eyes. Then he forces himself to slide the phone back into his pocket and begin the long walk home.
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"There's been a death in the family."
That's what Felicity told her boss. It had never for a second occurred to her that Sara wasn't technically a relative. Felicity had felt closer to the youngest Lance sister than she ever has to any of her own blood relatives. Besides, Sara saved her life and the lives of those she cares about. That makes her family. End of story.
She's never lost family before. Well, her dad ran out on her mom when Felicity was a kid, but honestly the only thing she felt then was relief. They were better off without him and his drinking and yelling and throwing things. Her grandmother died when she was ten, but she'd only met her once before that, so it really doesn't even count. Which makes Sara the first person Felicity has lost that she actually cared about. And she's pretty sure it would be hard anyway, but the fact that she's never been through this makes it even harder. She can only imagine what it must be like for poor Laurel to lose her sister for a second time.
And then there's Oliver. Stupid, idiotic Oliver who is clearly dying inside but who has decided that instead of letting it all out he'd rather just sit here and self-destruct. Well, fine. That's his stupid choice. But Felicity isn't just going to sit around and watch it happen.
She makes it out to her car before she finally falls apart. She's been slowly crumbling since they walked into the lair to find Sara's body, and now, alone in the safety of her car, she totally loses it. She leans forward and rests her forehead against the steering wheel and weeps like she's never wept before. Sara's gone. Dead. Shot with arrows and knocked off a roof. Felicity doesn't know how to even begin coping with that.
In the short time that they knew each other, Sara had been someone for Felicity to look up to. The Amazonian warrior who could take on world class assassins and barely break a sweat. The fearless adventurer who had a quip for every situation. But after the Tockman incident, Sara had become more than that. She had become Felicity's friend, the only real girl friend she had. Has ever had. Sara had been someone to team up with when she wanted to tease Oliver, someone to eat take out and watch movies with when she got tired of the testosterone, someone who she could talk to about anything. Someone who never failed to cheer her up, even on the worst of days. And now she's gone. In the blink of an eye, Sara has gone from invincible warrior to casualty of war. And it's tearing Felicity apart.
The incident has also served as a shocking reminder of her own mortality. Someday she's going to die. The question is: will she have lived before then? She knows in her head that what she and Oliver and the others are doing is good work. Necessary work. She won't walk away from that. But is that enough? She's been giving her life to this city in the hopes of making it a better place. Maybe it's time to do something for herself. If Sara were here, Felicity knows what she would say – to go accept Palmer's job offer. She would tell Felicity to go live.
The flood of tears has finally stopped by the time she comes to that conclusion. Felicity lifts her head off the steering wheel and sniffs. There's a pack of Kleenex in the glove box, so she uses that to clean up her face. Then she looks herself over in the rearview mirror and nods.
"Okay," she says quietly. Her voice is hoarse, but there is still strength in it. This is what Sara would want.
Even so, she makes herself wait until after the funeral that night to be sure Sara is properly laid to rest before driving herself over to Queen Consolidated. The receptionist recognizes her and waves her in toward the elevator. It's a long ride up, plenty of time to lose her nerve, but somehow she doesn't. By the time she gets to the top, she is even more sure that this is what she needs to be doing.
She exits the elevator to see Ray Palmer standing there.
"Hey," he says in surprise.
"Hi," Felicity says quietly as walks over to him.
"You changed your mind," he says, almost as if he's always known she would.
"I just decided I wanted more out of life," Felicity tells him.
Her voice is a bit weak and raspy from all the crying she's done in the last three days, but her resolve is firm. This is what she needs to do. For herself and for Sara. Oliver wants to honor their fallen friend by finding her killer. That's his way. But Felicity is going to honor her by living. Something tells her that's what Sara would have wanted.
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Oliver continues to sit in the same spot for a long time after Diggle leaves. Verdant is completely quiet save for the sound of the air vents overhead. But the silence is drowned out by the echo of that last fragment of conversation playing over and over in Oliver's ears.
"I don't want to die down here."
"So don't, Oliver."
That makes it sound so simple. But Oliver knows it's not. This identity, this place… They've become who he is. He doesn't even know how to be Oliver Queen anymore, how to not be the Arrow. He no longer has a life beyond these walls. Felicity was wrong. He's not hiding underneath his hood. He's made it a part of him. A part he doesn't know how to walk away from. And after finding Sara's broken body on that table, it terrifies him. Because unless something changes, someday the body on that table will be his.
Sara walked away from the League, from this life, for a while, but then she went back. She couldn't stay away. And in the end, it got her killed. She was the strongest person Oliver knew, had been trained by some of the best fighters in the world, and even that hadn't been enough to save her. So how in the world is Oliver supposed to save himself?
Starling City thinks he's a hero. They're wrong. What he is is tired. In two years he has lost his best friend, his mother, and his father's company. Thea has left him, going to goodness only knows where, and he has no idea when he'll see her again. And now Sara... It's all just too much. Everyone keeps looking to Oliver, keeps needing him to be strong, but he just isn't sure he has any strength left to give.
He can still see Laurel standing over there covered in blood, Sara's broken body laid out in front of her. He hadn't been able to believe it at first. It wasn't possible. How could strong, brilliant, beautiful Sara be dead?
The younger Lance girl has been so many things to Oliver over the years. A friend, a lover, a comrade in arms. But more importantly, after her return to Starling, she had been the one person in the world who understood him. Really, truly understood him. There had been so much freedom in that, in knowing that he didn't have to explain to her why he was the person he was. She had understood without him ever saying a word, had understood things he couldn't even begin to know how to explain. And now she's gone. The brilliant light she brought into his life has been snuffed out like a candle. And he doesn't even know who did it. The one thing that might somehow help the Lance family through this is closure, and he can't even give them that. What kind of hero does that make him?
There's a bloodstain on the table, he suddenly realizes. He and Roy had cleaned up most of it, but now as he stares at the table he realizes they missed a spot. One little spot of blood that is the only sign that Sara Lance was ever here.
Somehow that thought finally breaks Oliver. He's been pushing and pushing for the last three days, trying to hold himself together for the sake of everyone else. But now they're all gone, and Oliver is alone with the table and that tiny spot of blood. Now, in the crushing silence of the lair, he does what he has refused to do for the last three days. He puts his head in his hands and he cries.
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The first thing Laurel does when she gets home after the funeral is go straight to her closet. She can't seem to get Sara's stupid shark out of her head. She knows she still has some of her sister's things somewhere in her closet. Maybe the shark is in there too. As ridiculous as it sounds, part of her feels like being able to hug the stuffed animal might somehow make her feel better.
She digs through her closet like a madwoman, tossing articles of clothing across the floor until she finally finds the box. She sits back on the floor and pulls it open so fast she nearly rips the cardboard. There, nestled safely in the box, is the shark. He's tattered and worn and his tail is a bit squished from more or less spending six years in the box, but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that he's there.
Laurel's throat tightens and suddenly it's hard to breathe. The contents of the box swim briefly in front of her eyes. She takes a shaky breath and lets it out, trying to get herself under control. Then she reaches her trembling hands into the box and carefully pulls out the stuffed shark. He looks just like she remembers.
She pushes herself to her feet, still holding the shark, and picks her way through the mess covering her floor out into the living room. Once there, she heads over to the big chair by the window. On the few occasions Sara had come over to the apartment before returning to the League, she had expressed a fondness for that particular chair, even going to far as to kick their father out of it during a family movie night. It's Sara's spot, and that's that. The black jacket she gave to Laurel the night of her departure is still draped over the arm where Laurel left it as a constant reminder that her sister was coming back. Only now she's not.
Laurel carefully sits down in the chair, tucking her legs up underneath her. Then she holds out the shark and looks it up and down. Sara loves – loved this shark. It was there for every heartbreak, for every hard time. Even when society said she was far too old for stuffed animals, Laurel would still find her sister holding that shark to her chest. Now she kisses it tenderly on the nose and hugs it to her own chest, resting her cheek against its soft head. She had done this a lot after being told that Sara had died on Queen's Gambit. It doesn't smell like Sara anymore, but it still helps just the tiniest bit.
She can't believe she's back in this place. They just got Sara back, and now she's gone again. It's not fair. Why would they have gotten her back only to lose her again? The universe must have a sick sense of humor. She can't believe she's never going to see her sister's bright smile again, never going to feel her warm hugs or hear her beautiful laughter. No more sappy movie nights or spontaneous cookie baking or late night sister talks with ice-cream or playful arguments over whether the Christmas tree lights should be white or colored. It's all gone. For one single moment she had it all back, and now it's gone again. There are so many things they should have gotten to do together, and now they never will. She's already been through all of this once, and it nearly destroyed her. She's not sure if she has the strength to do it again.
Under normal circumstances, Laurel would probably be crying again, but after the emotional whirlwind of the last three days, she just doesn't have any tears left to give. She opens her miraculously dry eyes to see the black leather jacket still draped over the arm of the chair. Very slowly she lowers the shark into her lap and reaches out to pick up the jacket instead. She holds it up in front of her, her mind going back to the night Sara gave it to her.
"I think that this would look good on you," Sara had said.
At the time, it had seemed to Laurel like more of an initiation gift. Sort of a "Welcome to the Arrow club" kind of thing. But now, as she stares at the jacket, she wonders if maybe Sara meant it to be something more. Maybe she had known somehow the end was coming. Maybe she had meant the jacket to be her legacy, her way of passing the torch to Laurel.
The thought causes Laurel's throat to tighten. She looks up past the jacket at the wall where a picture hangs of her, Sara, and their father. It's the last one they took together before Sara left. The last one they'll ever have.
That, she knows, is the Sara everyone will remember. The girl who came back from the dead. The police chief's daughter who worked in a bar and dated Oliver Queen and then just disappeared again. But there was so much more to Sara. So much the world will never know.
Or maybe they will. Laurel's gaze shifts back down to the jacket in her hands. As much as it hurts, she can't bring Sara back. But she can preserve her sister's memory and she can do it proud. Laurel feels her jaw tighten as determination sets in. She can make sure that the legacy of the female vigilante lives on in Starling City. It's not much, but maybe she can make it be enough. It'll have to be. Aside from a leather jacket and a stuffed shark, Sara's memory is all Laurel has left of her sister.
She's going to do whatever she has to do to keep that memory alive.
So obviously this was not a happy piece, but hopefully it was a good one. As upset as I am about Sara's death, I think it's going to drive the characters to new heights this season, and I look forward to seeing that. Hopefully the writers continue to deliver amazing episodes like this one. In the mean time, please leave a review and let me know what you thought of this story. Thanks.
If you liked this piece, feel free to check out my other Arrow stories: "All My Secrets" (five times Laurel asked Sara about the missing six years and one time she got an answer), "A Friend in Me" (Sara and Felicity friendship story), and "Memento Mori" (an on-going multi-chapter piece about Laurel and Thea on each anniversary of the Queen's Gambit sinking).
R.I.P. Sara Lance. We will miss you.