This lovely little plot bunny attacked me out of nowhere after watching the episode "Deathstroke", and before I knew what had happened I was several thousand words in.

As always, I own nothing.

Chapter One - Conscription

"Prison does not suit you, Mr. Lance."

While the guard bound him to the links in the floor beneath the table, Quentin took stock of the woman sitting across from him. She was in her mid thirties with thick, curly copper hair. The pencil skirt and blouse she wore beneath her black suit jacket were immaculately pressed. Her eyes, slightly wide-set, were a very forgettable shade of brown. In short, she looked like any other suit that might find the time to talk to any criminal in IronHeights, but something about her set him on edge. Whoever she appeared to be, what she actually was seemed to be far from it.

The guard finished securing his bonds and took a few steps back, standing behind him as though prepared to stay there for whatever conversation might take place. The woman turned her gaze on the guard, unblinking. She stared for several long moments, waiting for the hint to take root. Finally, she turned her eyes back to her lap. "I do believe that even criminals have the right to conversation without a babysitter." Her voice was deceptively mild. "I would hate to have to call for an investigation of this facility because one overzealous guard thought it necessary to eavesdrop rather than retreating to stand by the door as protocol dictates."

Quentin could actually feel the angry flush that crept over the guard before he retreated as she'd suggested, and he knew without turning that the man would be hovering just inside the door, his eyes never leaving the prisoner in his charge. When the woman looked up again, her eyes bored into his own. Though her expression betrayed nothing, he could swear a flash of amusement lit her eyes. That alone kept his voice low when he addressed her. "I don't know you." The statement was flat and without question.

"No, you do not," she agreed, sliding a legal pad onto the table. "I was asked to speak to you by a mutual friend of ours." The next look she gave him was full of significance. "Felicity Smoak tells me that she thinks very highly of you."

Message received, Quentin thought. Given that his association with the Arrow was what got him into this mess, he wasn't entirely sure he liked where this conversation might be going. "She's a good girl. Just tends to get herself into too much trouble at times."

This time, the smile crossed her lips but never reached her eyes. "That is something on which we can both agree." She tapped a pen against the legal pad once, twice, three times, and then began to scribble notes. "Unfortunately, Miss Smoak's employer has taken several hits to his business as of late." She wasn't just talking about Oliver Queen. "Which, of course, is the reason why I'm here."

He waited, watching her. Something in the woman's mannerisms bothered him. Sitting in a prison seemed to be the absolute last thing that she wanted to do, but there was determination in her posture.

"Starling City is rotting, Mr. Lance." Her voice dropped, not low enough to be considered a conspiratorial whisper but certainly enough to keep from carrying to the guard at the door. "There is only so much that one person can do when they've lost most of their pieces and the opponent still has every pawn on the chessboard. It is particularly taxing when an important knight has been taken." Her eyes roamed over his face, and Quentin knew exactly what she was seeing: a black eye, stitches over the opposite eyebrow, the split in his lip, and the bandage across the bridge of his nose. The pen scratched against the legal pad, and he suspected it might be an inventory of his visible injuries. A lock of that copper hair fell over her face as her gaze fell to her writing. "Justice cannot come on the wings of the law when those wings are broken."

"Get to the point," he growled. "I've never been fond of dancing."

When she looked up at him again, beneath her lashes and that unmoved lock of hair, there was a genuine smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "I've always loved to dance." The admission was even quieter, but she didn't give him time to ponder it. "You have a choice. You can stay here while your case gets pushed back, passed over, and delayed until Starling City is nothing but waste, hoping that our mutual friend can fix it on his own. You can be a victim of a broken system and money shoved into the pockets of men you thought were as bent on upholding the law as you once were. Or you can be the honorable man that I'm told you are and fight for what you know is right."

His brow furrowed, uncomprehending. The woman leaned back in her chair, dropping her pen to the table. She crossed one leg over the other and folded her arms across her chest.

"You are a soldier, Mr. Lance," she continued. "For years you have been a soldier of the law, but that was never your goal. You weren't fighting for words written on paper and debated by people whose morals change like the seasons. You fought for this city, and all of the people in it who've been wronged. For a long time you've labored under the false pretense that the law had the same goal that you did, and perhaps at one time that was the case. As I said before, this city is rotting. When those who make the law begin to decay, the law can no longer be relied upon for justice. Realizing that, whether you've admitted it or not, is what brought you here."

"Your time's almost up," the guard called from the doorway, his voice laced with irritation. All at once, the woman's eyes became hard again, and she shot a glare at the guard that could have seared flesh. Her hand disappeared into her jacket, reemerging with several shiny plastic cards. She dropped them to the table, sliding them one by one across to him.

"Phone cards seem so outdated until one ends up in prison," she quipped. The first card had Laurel's name and cell number scribbled on the front in black sharpie. "It seems cruel to limit one's words to those they love by a piece of plastic loaded with money." The second had Sara's name and number. The last one, shoved at him with two very pointed finger taps against its corner, said Felicity, but the number on it was not the one he knew to belong to the IT specialist. "Miss Smoak was adamant that you only call when you're ready to rejoin the fight." The woman sat back, dropping her pen and legal pad into the purse sitting at her feet.

As the guard returned and began to unhook the restraints she stood, gathering her purse and walking steadily toward the door. As her hand reached for the handle she turned halfway, her expression open for a brief instant before the cool mask she'd been wearing shuttered over the flash of concern. "And, Mr. Lance, there are many men in here who are far less than happy with you. After all, you have quite the track record with the police force. Do take care of yourself."

Then she was gone, whirling out the door like a wisp of smoke. It wasn't until he was back in his cell, lying on the hard bunk and running his fingers over the three phone cards, that he realized she'd never given him her name. Just what was the Arrow playing at?

His conversation with Laurel was tense. He could tell in the tone of her voice that there was something she wasn't telling him. It hurt, but given everything she'd been through and piling his arrest on top of it he really couldn't blame her. She kept it shorter than he would have liked, using her work for the DA's office as a flimsy excuse that he saw straight through.

It was several days before he had the chance to use Sara's card. A couple of gang bangers caught up with him in the yard, and he spent some time recovering from the beating in the prison infirmary. They'd cracked several of his ribs, broken his nose, and knocked out one of his molars. With most prisoners being such a target for the other inmates would warrant solitary confinement, but the warden seemed to overlook everything that might go even the slightest bit in Quentin's favor. If nothing else, it served as proof that his mystery visitor might have been onto something.

Sara picked up on the first ring, sounding slightly winded. "Hello?"

Despite the pain in his jaw, he smiled. "Hey, Sara."

"Dad?" There was some rustling on the line and the distinct sound of voices shushing one another. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, sweetheart, it's me."

"It's him!" Sara confirmed to whoever she was with. "I was expecting to hear from you days ago!"

"I know. I'm sorry. Got into a bit of a tussle and had to spend a couple of days recovering." Quentin could hear the anger in her silence. "Don't you get all riled. Your daddy's a grown man, and he can take care of himself." She gave a little snort that told him worlds about what she thought of his ability to handle himself in a fight. "We can't all be world class assassins. How are things going?"

At the other end of the line, Sara sighed, her voice heavy with stress. "Not good. We're pretty seriously outmatched. There just aren't enough of us to handle this. We've all been calling in favors wherever we can think to find them."

"Was it a favor that brought me these phone cards?" he asked, the remarkably unremarkable woman flashing behind his eyes. "I never did get a name."

"That doesn't surprise me," Sara admitted. "It wasn't one of my favors." In the background, someone spoke out with sudden urgency. "Shit. Dad, I have to go, but don't hang up. There's someone else here who wants to talk to you. I love you. Don't get beat up so much."

"I'll try," he promised. "Be careful, Sara. I love you."

There was shuffling as the phone changed hands, and he heard several voices clamoring over one another. An address was shouted, and then another female voice came clearly through the din. "...try not to come back shot this time! Detective Lance?"

He smiled in spite of the pang of loss that raced through him. "I'm not even a cop anymore, Miss Smoak, much less a detective."

"It's Felicity, and you will always be a detective to me," she huffed. "Hold on a second." A flurry of keystrokes and a hiss of static later she spoke again. "Okay, that should scramble the call to sound like some really bad reception to anyone listening in, but I've only got a few minutes. Did your visitor give you a card with my name on it?"

"Yes-"

"Good," she interrupted, taking a deep breath. "Now, that number is definitely not mine so don't expect me to answer it when you call but we had to use my name for the cover to work since I've been telling everyone who will listen all about how you're the closest thing I've got to a father and by the way the press are a bunch of sucky vultures and if it hadn't been for Sara they would have made me insane." His heart stuck in his throat. The closest thing she had to a father? "Anyway, when you call make sure you say my name at least once and don't ever refer to her as anything else, okay?"

Shaking his head, he replied, "I can do that, but would you mind telling me who exactly I'll be talking to?"

Felicity hesitated, and Quentin could swear he heard her chewing on her bottom lip. "That's not for me to tell. That is, she's picky about who she gives her name to and you really need to ask her. But don't do it over the phone! Wait until after when the plan's in motion and all of that." She took another deep breath. "Look, I know that you're probably thinking that whatever we've got planned can't be strictly legal and you're pretty much spot on, but the thing is that we're really worried that someone's going to put out a prison hit on you and there's nothing we can do to get you out from a strictly legal standpoint. I mean, the city has barred Laurel from going anywhere near your case and none of us trust the other attorneys who've been assigned because we have no idea who Slade has in his pocket." A crackle of static came across the line. "And that's the end of my trip through the tunnel, it seems," she finished lamely, clearly uncomfortable with using a cover. "Can you promise me that you're going to take care of yourself?"

He softened, warmth blossoming through his chest at the genuine worry in her voice. "I promise. Promise me that you'll take care of everyone else?"

"As much as I can," she snorted. "All I do is sit at a computer. Speaking of, my baby is beeping at me which means that I need to go and do my 'work' things." The emphasis on 'work' wasn't lost on him.

"Felicity?"

"Yeah?"

"I'd be proud to have you as a daughter." At the other end of the line, Felicity Smoak babbled her way through an embarrassed goodbye, reminding him three more times to be safe. He stood at the phone for several long moments after they hung up, twirling the third phone card between his fingertips. It wasn't that the decision was particularly difficult. What bothered him was how absolutely easy it was to make. Was everything really as bad as he now believed it to be, or had he just been corrupted by his alliances?

Whichever was the truth, he still dialed the number written beneath Felicity's name. He didn't breathe for the three long rings before the woman at the other end of the line picked up. A spark of static came through before she spoke, alerting him that she was using something similar to Felicity's scrambler. "Hello, Mr. Lance." Her voice was just as collected as he remembered it from their brief meeting. "I trust that whatever criminals attacked you this time left your voice intact." Somehow, it wasn't surprising that she knew he'd been in a fight. Thankfully, he was more comfortable with covers than the sweet IT girl he'd been talking to not long before.

"Hey, Felicity," he began, affecting a voice that said he was annoyed at himself for leaving something out. "I forgot to tell you that I'm ready to fight."

"Excellent," she practically purred. "I'll see you in two days. Try not to get killed before then." With another crackle of static, the line went dead.

"You too, kiddo," he muttered for the benefit of the others near him.

Two days.