"Hi Ollie."

Oliver stood perfectly still, rooted to his spot by legs that refused to move, or feel for that matter. Standing right in front of him, somehow, was none other than Laurel Lance. For a minute he thought that he might be back in the Dominators ship, hooked up to their brain pods and that this was the start of the perfect world trap all over again. But this didn't feel like that did. He could still remember the absolute hell that had been his Christmas Eve thus far and that was certainly something that the dream world hadn't offered him. Laurel, meanwhile, stood patiently as he gathered his thoughts and waited for his reaction. She shifted her weight once or twice between her feet and tucked a piece of blonde hair behind her ear, never once breaking eye contact as she did.

"How?" He finally managed to get out once his mind had finally, more or less, accepted that the woman standing before him was in fact real. Although if she was really Laurel Lance was still yet to be 100% believed.

She smiled at the question, "I was hoping you could tell me." She said, "One minute I was in the hospital talking to you, I had some sort of seizure, and the next thing I knew was waking up halfway around the world with your friend Tatsu kneeling over me, and three months had passed."

Tatsu.

She had been with Tatsu.

That made some sense, offering at least an explanation to how she was alive. But how had she gotten to the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains? How did she even get out of Star City?

"I take it from the shock still written all over your face, you have no idea how I got there?" She half asked and Oliver, his mouth still parted ever so slightly from the surprise, shook his head.

"No," he confirmed, "I thought, I thought you were dead." When he said it he finally seemed to snap out of his shock, whereas it had the opposite effect on Laurel and her breath hitched at the confirmation that everyone she loved truly had believed her dead all this time. "You died, Laurel." He continued, talking a few steps closer to her. "I watched you die. I watched your seizure and I watched the heart monitor go flat, so how are you here?"

Anyone else listening to Oliver would've thought he sounded angry, and he did, but not for reasons that the untrained ear might believe. Laurel knew that he was not angry with her, far from it, but he was angry that he couldn't understand what had happened to her.

"I don't know," she answered honestly, well semi-honestly. She understood how she had recovered in Tatsu's cabin and made it back to Star City once she was well, that much made sense. But what she didn't understand was the answer to his question, which was how had she died right in front of him and yet survived without his knowledge.

Oliver's face, as always, was practically unreadable. Even after knowing him all her life Laurel still wasn't entirely sure if he believed her or not, and when he turned and began walking away she was nearly certain that he didn't.

"Come on," he called back to her, though he didn't bother looking back.

"Where are we going?" She questioned and this time he did turn back around.

"To get the shovels."

Digging her own grave was something that Laurel had never imagined she would be doing, not even after she took up the mantle of Black Canary. Technically she wasn't exactly digging her own grave right now, but rather digging it up. Not that digging up a grave had been on her to-do list; especially considering this marked her second time doing so. At least Thea had been willing to talk to her the last time, but Ollie hadn't said a word since they left the bunker. She couldn't blame him for that of course, he had come back from the dead once and even with the news informing her first she had been at a loss for words when he turned up in her office. She could only imagine the shock she was putting on him by just showing up in the bunker.

When they had finally cleared away all the dirt and unearthed the wooden casket Oliver lowered himself into the hole with Laurel doing the same right behind him. He looked at her for an instant, although why he couldn't say. Maybe he wanted to say something, but what could he say? He wanted to threaten her, to believe that she was not the real Laurel and that the real Laurel was lying beneath the cover of this coffin at their feet. But when he looked into her eyes they were so familiar. They were the exact eyes he had looked into a countless number of times over the course of his life. They were the eyes he often dreamt of during his time on the island and various other places over the course of those five years. There was nothing off about them, nothing out of place, not in the slightest. So if the Laurel by his side was an illusion or an imposter of some sort, she was a pretty damn good one.

"Ready?" He finally found himself asking and the woman beside him inhaled a deep breath in response, she looked almost as afraid of finding her own body in the casket as he did.

"As I'll ever be." She answered and the two of them stared at the closed casket for just another moment more, and then together they opened it.

There lied Laurel Lance.

They both stared at the body, breath hitching in both of their throats. Oliver felt his heart sink and it suddenly became clear to him that he had, somehow, actually allowed himself to hope. He hadn't truly expected to find Laurel's body in the coffin, but there she was. Dressed in the white dress he had only been able to assume her mother picked for her to wear when they buried her. When he finally managed to turn his head and look over at the woman standing next to him, whoever, whatever, she is, she looked to be just as surprised by the sight before them as he.

"Explain," he demanded of her in an icy voice.

Her head whirled to him, one hand covering her dropped jaw and what he could swear to be tears beginning to coat her eyes.

"I-" She began before she looked back to the body as if it held the answers, and then back him when she realized it didn't. "I-" She stopped again, but this time her eyebrows crinkled and when she turned her attention back to the body it was with more of a look like she were inspecting it. "Wait," She said, beginning to bend down and reach out her hand, only to be stopped by Oliver's much larger hand latching around her wrist and holding an aggressive grip.

"Don't touch her," he commanded, his voice colder than Laurel could ever remember hearing it, but she still met his eyes.

"Then you touch her," She dared, "Because when I dug Sara up she looked like a skeleton wearing skin. Her neck and her eyes were sunken in, her clothes were hanging off her, and her skin was paler than a piece of paper. This girl has been down here for seven months."

Oliver took another look at the body, though he didn't let go of the wrist of the possible imposter. She did have a point though. The body they were staring at looked as though it could've been buried yesterday. Her skin was still the tanned color Laurel's always had been, her face just as full and bright as every picture he had been staring at since she died, and the dress still clung as snuggly to her body as it had the day of the funeral. Finally releasing his grip on the woman beside him Oliver bent over and ever so gently laid the backs of his fingers against the body in the casket.

Now Oliver Queen, being a man who has handled just as many dead bodies as he has live ones, knew the feeling of skin in both states. But the arm of the woman didn't feel like skin, instead it felt like rubber.

No, it didn't feel like rubber, it WAS rubber. Turning his hand over and griping the forearm of the body he squeezed it, just a little, and his fingers went right into it as if he were squeezing Jell-O.

"It's a dummy," The woman next to him breathed, no, LAUREL breathed. She wasn't buried in the grave six feet under, never had been. She had been with Tatsu, although how she got there and how this replica of her ended up in the casket was still a mystery that needed to be solved.

Now that their mission in Chicago was complete the crew of the Waverider found themselves facing a new dilemma, whether or not to return home for Christmas.

It was a new challenge for them, as they had never been away over the holidays before. They had more or less gone for Thanksgiving, although they didn't realize the date until after they had left. They had Gideon keeping track of the present, so that they would know what date to return to anytime they did end up going home for whatever reason. But the last time they were home everything had been so crazy with fighting the Dominators that they didn't even realize they had been there over the course of Thanksgiving. So technically they had been home for the last major holiday, but they had been working and so technically they still probably owed it to their families to go home if they could.

Currently they were all thinking it over, but there was a reason that Rip said they were destined to have minimal impacts on the timeline; they had very few things to leave behind.

Sara hadn't celebrated Christmas in nine years; unless she was counting the two years she had lived in the 50's in which case it was eleven years. And with Laurel dead she would almost welcome the distraction of remaining in the time stream over the holiday. Ray, Nate, and Amaya all claimed to not care one way or the other what they did because they don't really have anyone back in 2016, or 1942, to spend the holidays with. Ray's entire family still thinks he's dead, Nate's father apparently is dead and he has no desire to hear any lectures from his over protective mother, and the JSA wasn't exactly the type of group to spend Christmas together. Mick, like Sara, wasn't completely against going home but also would welcome not being reminded that this was the first Christmas since Snart's death. Jax was really the only one completely on the side of going home, as he wanted to spend Christmas with his mother. Even Stein was torn between wanting to go and wanting to stay, as he was afraid that he hadn't yet remembered enough about his daughter to be ready to spend Chanukah celebrating with her.

They needed to make a decision soon, as it was already well into the hours of Christmas Eve. So Sara was currently in her room and wailing on a punching bag as a means of avoiding the issue, when Gideon chimed in.

"Pardon the interruption Captain Lance, but I have received a message for you originating from Central City 2016."

Sara crinkled her brow as she stilled the punching bag and caught her breath. It didn't surprise her so much that their friends back home were able to contact the Waverider, Barry had explained the time vault and their version of Gideon to her after the first time, but what were they calling them about so soon after the Dominators?

"Play it," she requested of Gideon, almost completely expecting to hear a Christmas card message or maybe Cisco asking if the Legends would be coming home tomorrow.

"Hey Sara it's Barry, um I'm not entirely sure how to explain this to you but something's… something's happened and you, you need to come to S.T.A.R. Labs. Like as soon as possible."

The message ended and Sara crinkled her brow even more at the vagueness of it, there was nothing about it that wasn't suspicious.

"Gideon?" She asked,

"Yes Captain?"

"What are the chances this is a trap?" Sara asked wearily, after the stunt their evil speedster pulled impersonating Stein just yesterday she wasn't going to take any chances on a random message claiming to be from Barry.

"I am afraid that I lack the capability to properly determine those odds, however I can confirm that the message did in fact originate in S.T.A.R. Laboratories, Central City 2016." The AI replied and Sara nodded, she may not be 100% assured that following this message wouldn't be a death sentence but knowing that Gideon could track it's point of origin did make her feel slightly better.

Reaching up to her ear she pressed her finger against the ever-present comm., wondering whether or not she was going to end up regretting this.

"Everyone to the bridge, we've got somewhere to be."

"What are we doing here?" Mick questioned as he entered the bridge alongside the rest of the team, "I was finally getting somewhere until you interrupted my drinking."

The others rolled their eyes at his comment, Sara especially, but nobody had the patience to lecture Mick on his drinking habits at the moment so it simply passed without a response.

Sara instructed Gideon to play Barry's message for the others and when it was done she looked around at them, various expressions of confusion and skepticism written on their faces.

"Well?" She asked,

"It isn't exactly a lot to go on," Jax spoke up, of course that was a huge understatement.

"We're talking about a guy with super speed," Ray began, "On a daily basis Barry puts away Meta's who can distort reality, lift whole buildings off the ground, even manipulate the weather. If he can't put into words what's going on, it's got to be big."

"Bigger than an alien invasion?" Jax skeptically questioned, "Because he was able to put THAT into words."

Many of the others nodded in agreement, having thoughts along the same lines as Sara initially did about the message being some sort of trap.

"There's no way Gideon can be sure it was really Barry who sent the message, but she is sure that it came from the exact same source as the last message he sent, the one informing us about the Dominators." The blonde assured the rest of the team.

"So it's a pretty safe bet that it's Barry," Nate said and Sara nodded, she believed that the message was real enough to go check out what was going on. "Well then…" The historian continued, "All in favor of going home for Christmas?" He asked, raising his hand. The action was soon mimicked by Jax, Ray, Sara, and so on and so forth until the vote was unanimous.

"Strap in," Sara instructed, at her words the group disbanded and headed for their chairs, each of them wondering just what it might be that they are about to walk into.