Hello! So, you know who this chapter is from the perspective of? Roy. Enjoy!
Warnings for this chapter are: a semi-detailed field dressing of a bad injury (so many spoilers, must not say anything else).
I love idiots.
I grin, slipping to the side of a charging goon and accidentally letting the arrow on my bow release. He howls as it impales his right calf, collapsing to the ground, and I automatically raise my hand for another projectile. My fingertips drift over the shafts, feeling for an unmarked one through my gloves and drawing it to my bow before the thug is even fully on the ground.
"Watch your step, buddy!" I call as I spin towards the next thug, sinking to one knee and sending my second arrow through his side. It ricochets off the wall behind him, skittering off into the dimly lit warehouse — cliche idiots, these ones, my favorite kind — as the man gapes at me and raises shaking hands to the bloody hole through his torso.
I meet a third one coming in to my left, extending a leg out and upwards to catch in the middle of his chest as he drives himself into it with all of that lovely momentum. Something definitively cracks; my grin gets a little wider. I get back to my feet and leap to the side to dodge a rush of bullets — including some that must hit my broken-ribbed friend, and probably the one on the floor too — and draw two arrows to my bow as I roll, in a practiced maneuver that feels like second nature now. I let them fly the second I'm straight again.
One pins a suited bodyguard to the wall behind him by his thigh, which is luckier than his very dead friend in the identical suit. Speaking of dead friends…
I turn, reaching for the handgun holstered at my calf and then putting a bullet into the head of one of the fleeing thugs. Looks like only the two bodyguards of the man cowering beneath the table were smart enough to bring guns to this meet. Dumbasses. There are two more fleeing thugs that I take out equally as easy — one with a shot through his lower back and the other through the throat, I like my variety — before I straighten up. I sling my bow over my back, and check the rounds in my gun as I head for the idiot under the table.
I've been through three of these meetings tonight, all by the same two groups, and it looks like I've finally hit the jackpot. This guy is dressed so much nicer than anyone else I've killed crashing these parties, so if he's not the leader he's one of the more impressive underlings. This should be fun.
The bodyguard pinned to the wall looks like he's going into shock — he's turning a pretty entertaining shade of pale — and I idly put a bullet in him after making sure I'm still decently stocked. I've got the ammo to waste on soon-to-be-corpses, no problem. He slumps, pulling the arrow out of the wall with his weight as he collapses with the wet, heavy thud of a bloody body.
I kick the table away from on top of the cowering leader, letting the metal screech over the floor and then fall over with a ringing clang. He stares up at me, eyes wide in terror and his skin already slick with sweat.
"So," I announce, tucking the gun back into its holster, "let's have a talk, you and I." I offer him one of my wider grins, sinking down to crouch in front of him and drawing my knife out of the large, obvious sheath on my left thigh. He makes a little squeaky sound of terror. "I've been through three of your other meetings tonight," I inform him, "and I'd like to think that was all of them, but you're going to tell me if I'm right. Clear?"
He nods, vigorously, and then flinches with a terrified little cringe as I pat his calf with my free hand.
"Good!" I say, letting my cheer into my words. "So, including this little gathering, you had four of them set up, right?"
"Yes," he gasps, visibly shaking, and I flip the knife in my hand, watching his eyes follow it up and back down.
"Now, you're really sure about that answer, right?"
"Please," he begs, holding both arms up like they'll do a damn thing to stop me. "God please don't hurt me, please."
I chuckle, giving his leg another pat and straightening up. "Bud, I'm gonna hurt you either way," I let him know, watching his skin whiten in fear, "but if you tell me the truth, then I don't have to track you back down and finish things when I find out you were lying. So! Are you really sure that's the answer you want to give me?" He stares at me, eyes slowly starting to water, and I reach forward to tap the flat of the knife against his foot. "Hey, you still with me, buddy?"
He freaks the second the knife touches him, letting out a cry of fear and scrambling away from me on his back. I snort, rolling my eyes as I straighten up and he finally figures out that rolling over and getting to his feet is probably easier than crab-crawling his way across the floor.
"Have you ever even been in Star City before?" I call after him, straightening up and sheathing the knife, reaching for my bow. "You're trying to run away from an archer, genius." I put an arrow through his left shoulder, the force spinning him forward and off balance, back to the floor. I take my time getting over to him as he sobs and clutches at it, blood staining his half-decent formal white shirt. I know what the high-price clothing lines look like, and that is not one of them.
I step down on his back, flattening him out against the concrete, and lean down to tear the arrow out of the back of his shoulder. He screams. I notch the retrieved arrow to my bow and step off him, flipping him over onto his back with the toe of my boot.
"You've got more limbs," I inform him conversationally, holding the string loosely between my fingers, "and I've got all night and a lot of sharp things to play with. How about we cut to the chase and save us both some time, hm?"
"That's it," he blubbers, "I swear."
"Great," I say with a grin. "If you're lying to me I'm going to find you in the hospital and we'll have some fun, hm? Now, you didn't set all this up — you're not nearly high paid enough — so you're going to pass a message onto your boss for me, alright?" He nods.
"Anything," he promises, and I pull the arrow off the bow and swing it to secure over my back again. I keep the arrow in my hand, and step forward onto the wrist of his injured arm, crouching down. He whimpers, but doesn't try and get me off him.
"Let him know that this?" I raise my free hand to make some kind of vague gesture encompassing the warehouse. "Star City? This is Red Archer's territory. If your boss wants to do business here, he should be polite about it, hm? Ask first, maybe offer some gifts? You know, be nice. This?" I gesture again. "Is a really fast way to get on his bad side, and as I am so kindly demonstrating, that is not a place he wants to be. Alright?"
"I will, I will." The not-quite-a-leader nods like his head's falling off, and I tap the tip of the arrow against the middle of his chest.
"That's appreciated, buddy. Now, let's make sure the message has the right kind of envelope, shall we?"
I whistle to myself, taking a glance around to make sure I'm alone before I tug my left glove off and press my fingertips to the flat black screen beside the metal door. It flashes blue, and then the lock disengages with a heavy clunk. I leave my glove off, pushing my way through the door and letting it fall shut behind me.
Ah, temporary home sweet home. I bypass the metal table to my left filled with all my basic supplies — arrows and ammo, mostly — and move to the sink built into the wall beyond it. I drop my glove into it and then tug off the other one, letting it fall to join its comrade. I flick the handle, watching for a second as the water streams down, running red as it washes the blood off my gloves. They're the same color, so it's not like anyone looking would actually notice it until it dried, but I don't like it on my bowstring.
I lower my hands in, turning the gloves and still whistling as I scrub at them till the water runs clear. I push the water off, leaving them in the sink to dry, and turn to my right to the rest of my section of the room. Two tables and a section of shelves, littered with everything I could ever need to cause havoc in Star City. Arrows of all kinds, guns, and a bunch of things to cause various levels of explosions. It doesn't have any of my experimental gadgets though, which kinda saddens me. Those are all back at the main base; this is just a stop-off point.
Oliver's stuff is on the opposite side, but he's got much less variety over there. Oliver is all arrows, all the time. He doesn't appreciate the fine art of explosions, or the kick of a gun. His loss.
I clear a space on one of the tables, taking my handgun out of its holster and setting it down. I check my ammo pockets first, refilling those with cartridges, and get most of the way through checking the rest of my pockets to see what else I might need before I hear the door open.
"Hey Ollie," I call over my shoulder. We're the only two people that pad accepts, so unless Owlman the bastard is back in town, no one else can open that door normally. It clicks shut again without him answering, and I look back over my shoulder.
He looks all kinds of pissed off, which is interesting. Not rare, but usually Oliver stays in a pretty good mood unless someone does something dumb. Huh. I reach back and unhook my bow, pulling it down to take a look and make sure it's still fine after the busy night.
"I took care of that group trying all those business deals with our gangs," I let him know, turning towards him as I run my fingers down the bow, and draw it for a moment to check that the string feels alright. "Four meetings, but I found the high-ranker. Whoever was bossing them around has a nice message waiting for him in the hospital; he's been warned to ask permission before he starts doing things on our turf."
I can hear the click of Oliver's boots — I'll never understand why he keeps those slight heels — but he still doesn't say anything. Okay, bad mood then. Wonder what Crime Syndicate member did it this time? It's always one of those bastards. I can see the edge of his costume where he's standing in front of me, and I raise my head to look at him. His teeth are curled into a snarl, his muscles are locked tight, and I suddenly get the impression that he's mad at me.
"Ollie?"
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Oliver shouts, shoving me back with both hands in a hard push.
I slam back into the metal table behind me, the equipment on the top scattering beneath my hands as I try and get a semblance of balance back with my bow still held in my left hand. "Woah!" I call, lifting it out to the side as I straighten up, gripping the edge of the table with my free hand. "Ollie, woah! What did I do?!"
He's pissed, I know that much, but hell if I know why. Did I fuck something up, kill someone I wasn't supposed to? I was pretty sure I had a handle on who the important players in Star City were, and I definitely didn't put an arrow in any of them recently. Definitely not tonight, either. Oliver sent me after these guys, and I only killed thugs anyway, the main guy is still alive. Maybe not whole, or really conscious at the moment, but he's alive.
The last time Oliver looked this angry I'd… No, he's never been this angry with me before. The last time I saw him this angry, Owlman had let the Jokester kill Talon, and Oliver definitely was about this furious but he never aimed it at me. Which was good, because I had my own frustrations about Talon's death.
The punch is quick, snapping my head to one side before my automatic block gets far enough up to stop it. I stagger, and then Oliver's hands are wrapped around my throat. I take in a sharp breath before they tighten, tensing the muscles of my neck against his hands to keep as much control as I can while my mentor tries to fucking strangle me. I flail for a second, as he presses me down over the table, before training kicks in.
I slam my bow into the side of his head — he must be furious, because that should never have hit him — and kick out when he recoils from the blow, shoving him away from me. I take in a gasp of air, but immediately move to get my hand up over my shoulder and get an arrow in my hand. I draw it to the bow before I even try and straighten up, pulling the string tight to my cheek. My hands are shaking.
He meets me with a bow in his own hands, always faster than I am at the draw, and I stare down the arrow at him, at the twin weapon aimed at my chest. I carefully straighten up, not letting the string relax even a little, and take a step sideways so I'm not pinned against the table or the wall.
"Oliver," I start cautiously, feeling my heart pounding in my chest, "can we maybe talk about this whole killing me thing?" I don't stop moving, backing up to get some distance between us because Oliver is by far the better close combat fighter, but we're a little more evenly matched when it comes to archery.
"What is wrong with you, Roy?" Oliver repeats, and he sounds disgusted. "Cheshire, really?" My heart stops for a second. Oh no.
How the hell did he find out? Cheshire and I were careful, we were always so careful, and it's not like Oliver's a great tracker. He can hunt down leads, sure, but me? I picked up all kinds of tips from Talon, so I'm harder to find than most people give me credit for, and Cheshire's just as good at hiding her tracks. Oliver shouldn't have found out.
"Were you even thinking, Roy?! If you told her anything—"
"No!" I deny, stopping in my tracks and letting the string of my bow relax just a little, letting the arrow drop down an inch or so. "Of course not! She knows…" I have to stop, thinking about it for a few seconds. "She knows my name, that's it." Totally a lie. I only told her my name, but Cheshire is… she's amazing. She knows more than that, guaranteed.
Oliver's aim doesn't waver, and my grip tightens on the limb of my bow as he speaks. "And your face. That's more than enough to trace you back to me. Roy, you stupid little bastard."
"Oliver," I try a placating tone, but I'm nowhere near dumb enough to let myself relax, "she won't be a problem, I promise. It wasn't serious."
Oliver's face tightens, teeth grinding together. "Your eight month old daughter says otherwise," my mentor spits at me. My words, all my carefully constructed arguments, die on my tongue. He knows. But that… Cheshire would never let that happen, she'd die before putting our daughter in danger. No. "Do you know how weak it makes me look, that Owlman had to tell me this was going on? The Syndicate would have a damn field day."
"I never meant—"
The twang of a bowstring is my only warning, and the arrow slices through the side of my shoulder as instinctual reaction jerks me to the side. I grit my teeth, aiming and loosing my shot in the same breath. Oliver is already moving, jagged patterns that make him insanely hard to hit, and the shot whistles past his side with inches to spare. It may as well be a mile, for people like us. I reach for another arrow — his is already on the string, drawing up for him to sight along — and leap around the edge of one of the metal cabinets in the back of the room as he shoots again. It skitters off the concrete floor, close to my feet, and I risk a glance down at my shoulder.
Fuck, that stings. It doesn't look too deep, though there's a neat trail of blood trickling down my arm, and I can still draw my bow so right now it's not important. I can patch or stitch it up when Oliver isn't shooting at me, if I get out of here alive.
"I raised you," Oliver yells, and oh if I was stupid enough I could try looking around the cabinet, but I'm just not. I like having my nose in one piece, and I really like not having an arrow in my skull. I'm totally not up for testing Oliver's reaction speeds. "I thought you knew better than to screw around with heroes, Roy! She's one of them, you should have put an arrow in her!"
"I didn't know who she was!" I call around the edge of the cabinet, checking the angle of my drawn arrow and then looking over my shoulder at the quiver on my back. I've been out all night already, and I hadn't restocked my arrows yet so I only have five left against Oliver's full quiver, and most of mine are specialty. I kind of cut it down to the wire on arrows before I headed back to stock; I still had bullets so it didn't matter so much.
…
My gun is on the table.
Shit, I'm not really liking my chances here. Sure, an EMP arrow might seem like a good idea on a drawing board (and it works freaking marvels against androids), but unless I want to take out the lights in here it won't do me any good.
I like lights.
"Come on, Oliver, we can talk about this, right? Without the arrows?"
"Sure," come the tight response, "come on out and talk, Roy." It still sounds like a growled threat, and Oliver doesn't whiplash like this. When he's pissed, he stays pissed. When Talon was killed it took three weeks and about four dozen people (and those were just the casualties) before he calmed down.
My hand trembles, protesting holding the drawstring tight with a shiver of pain from the wound in my shoulder. I tilt my head back against the metal, ignoring the sting. Oh I hope to god Oliver didn't tag me with a poisoned arrow, guessing the antidotes I have handy without knowing what he hit me with could be… bad. He wouldn't, right? If he's this pissed at me he'll want to kill me personally, not let me die from poison. Wow, that's a really terrible thing to think about.
"Somehow I'm not believing you," I answer, taking a look around for something, fucking anything, that will get me out of this in one piece. This is a bad place to be, for positioning. This place is just a drop-off point, a refueling station, so there's only the one door, and that door is behind Oliver. I've got a nice defensive position, with six spaced metal cabinets (for specialized or heavy equipment, mostly, this is our most used drop off) that I can dive between, but there's only empty space and one pissed off archer between me and the door. That's not good.
There's all kinds of deadly stuff in the cabinets, but I uh… don't have it memorized, and going for something would also mean I'd need to let the arrow off my bow. I'd only get one chance to grab something useful, and who knows what's in here? What if I end up with some kryptonite tool? That'd be totally useless against Oliver.
Oh, shit, and Oliver is at the front of the room, with the tables of gear. Which means—
"Come out, Roy, now, or I swear I'll throw the whole damn case of grenades back there with you."
Yeah, means that.
"Woah! Okay, alright." I raise my bow again, taking a deep breath and praying — and I don't even believe in a god, so who am I kidding? — that Oliver gives me some kind of chance to explain. I step around the edge of the cabinet.
Oliver is next to my table, which means he's got a lot of nasty shit about a foot away from him. All of those things are ones I usually use, yeah, but he knows enough about explosive devices to set them off. It's not like the gear is totally exclusive.
"How about you give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you right now?" Oliver hisses, glaring at me. Even with his mask on I can still picture his furious, narrowed eyes in my head. My arm twitches again, and I clench my teeth and bite back the urge to let the string relax. "For god's sake, Roy, a hero? And her? She's one of Ra's' pawns and you know that. Of all the people you could have messed around with—"
"I didn't know, Oliver," I insist. "I swear, I didn't know who she was until she dropped in through my damn window and told me we had a kid."
Oliver shakes his head, and I can see his gloved hand clench down on the limb of the bow. "Great, you're blind too. You should have told me the second you knew, Roy, and the only reason I can think of that you didn't is because you've actually fallen for the bitch."
"Don't call her that," I snap, feeling anger for the first time in this conversation.
"You have," Oliver says. "You fool. You fell in love with a damn hero and her brat, and you picked that over me?"
"I was kinda hoping to not pick at all," I admit, a third shiver forcing me to relax a bit of the tension on my bowstring. Dangerous, and terrible, but I haven't got much choice in it. I'm not going to get out of this by wrecking my bow arm right off the bat; that would be a hell of a way to lose something like this. Damn, this was a terrible first injury to take. Anything else would have been fine — anything this comparatively minor, anyway — but not that arm. I need that arm.
"You had to know I'd find out eventually, Roy. Did you make any kind of a plan for all this, or are you just recklessly barging your way through life like you always do? Did you just hope I'd decide to let it go?"
I hesitate, and then my tongue runs away with my brain. "Is it bad if I admit I was pretty sure you were never going to notice?"
The arrow that slices past my throat is really answer enough. My back slams against the metal cabinet to my left, and the precious fraction of a second I waste having to draw my bow back all the way before I fire lets Oliver duck to the side and have it bounce off the wall instead of hitting him. He reaches for the table instead of another arrow, and I get a moment of panicky heart-stopping fear when he flings one of my grenades at me. Instinct more than anything else lets me turn and smack it out of the air with my bow, back towards him, which makes me feel awesome for all of a second before I realize he never pulled the pin, there's an arrow on his string, and I'm in an awful position to do any kind of dodging.
I give a shout as his arrow sinks into my left thigh, head slamming back against the metal as I arch and my free hand clenches tight. I bite down the scream. I've taken worse than this, right? Right, totally. One arrow through the leg, no problem. I can deal. It's not so bad, really.
Christ, is this what people feel like when I shoot them?
I struggle to back off, to get behind something and out of Oliver's line of sight, but that leg won't hold my weight and I'm stuck leaning on the cabinet, my chest rising in sharp, shallow breaths and providing a nice giant target for the next arrow. I grit my teeth, bracing and closing my eyes as I wait for the sudden, sharp pain between my ribs, or if he's nice the easy blackness of one to my head.
The kick to my side is totally unexpected.
I hit the ground hard, giving a gasp of pain as the point of the arrow jutting out of my leg grinds across the floor, pulling at the edges of the wound in a way that blacks my vision out for a second. They're made of stronger stuff than your classic arrows, so it doesn't snap, just awkwardly forces my leg to one side. My bow leaves my grip, skidding across the floor past my head, and I reach for it once — in instinctive, panicked reaction to the loss of my weapon — before Oliver is crouching over me, the steel of an arrow tip digging into the underside of my jaw and forcing my head flat back against the floor. I swallow, feeling the metal move against my skin, and drag my gaze up to meet his.
I didn't think I was going to die at Oliver's hands. I don't think that thought's ever even crossed my mind. Sure, we fought, but it was never like this. Never physical.
I pull in a ragged breath, gritting my teeth to suppress some kind of sound I definitely don't want to make right now. At least if he shoots me like this it'll be pretty much instant. Maybe a brief flash of pain, but the angle that it's at will sever my spine, and the shock of it will make me really unconscious long before I either bleed out, choke on my own blood, or suffocate.
That's not so bad, really. There are a lot of ways this could have gone that are a lot worse.
Shame Jade will have to raise Lian alone, though. I really… God, I love her. I love everything about her, and it stuns me every time I see her that she slept with me knowing who I was, and kept seeing me. A hero like her? I figured she'd drop me at the first opportunity, once she had whatever she wanted. It's not great to be associated with someone like me, after all.
And Lian… Lian. I hope Jade… I hope Jade makes something up. Some kind of story about a father who died to protect her, or something. Our daughter doesn't need to know that I'm the kind of person she should be protected from. I hope Jade lies to her.
Oliver stares down at me, shoulders trembling with what has to be fury. His mouth curls in a sneer. "You betrayed me, Roy. I raised you, and you went behind my back."
"Get it over with," I manage, through my teeth.
Finally, after a long silence, the arrow draws back from my throat, and Oliver very deliberately pulls it off his bow and slides it back into the quiver behind his shoulder. I blink, and the next second his bow cracks across my face. The world erupts into spots, and I swallow and twitch my way back to really being able to see. Oliver stands up, feet planted to either side of my waist as he stares down at me. I can feel the ache in my jaw, the trickle of blood on my skin from some kind of cut.
"I want you gone," he says slowly, glaring down at me. "I'm going to let you limp away this time, Roy, but if you ever come face to face with me again I'll put an arrow through you and make sure it kills you. Do you understand me?"
I try to nod but it makes me dizzy — oh, concussions are fun — so I crack my mouth open far enough to force out, "Yes."
He steps away from me, turning his back and heading for the exit. "I don't care where you go, but be gone, Roy. You're not part of my circle anymore."
I swallow, barely managing to lift my head as I hear the door click open and shut again. With Oliver gone I let the low cry of pain I've been biting back leave me, arching my throat and gritting my teeth to hold the rest in. I don't have time for this. There's an arrow in my thigh, and I know enough about arrow wounds to know how they have to be dealt with.
I hope to god I have enough pain tolerance to get through it.
From here, the distance to my medical supplies — tucked under my table at the very front of the room — seems like a totally impossible distance, but I start anyway. I curl, dragging myself along the floor by just the strength of my arms, unable to use my uninjured leg effectively while keeping my impaled one at the right angle not to disturb the wound. I'm sweating and shaking by the time I make it, and there's an impressive trail of blood behind me that's pretty worrying, but I get to grab the basic emergency medical kit like it's a prize. Which it is, after getting over here.
I throw it open and grab a couple of thick pads out of it, a bottle of alcohol, and a shot of a painkiller I can't recall the exact name of right now. It doesn't thin blood out, and that's the important bit. I reach down, feeling at the edges of the wound, and have to stop and take in several deep breaths as my leg flinches away from the sharp burst of pain. This is going to suck.
Oliver's arrows are not designed to come back out, and the heads don't unscrew like the nicer ones used by some hunters. The only way to get it out apart from cutting the ends off — and we've got the tools to do that in the main base, but not here — is to shove it through. No one can get in here, and I'm definitely not crawling out into public to try and get someone to come by and get me out of this mess. I don't think I'll last long enough for someone to get here, and then get me somewhere with the right tools, not to mention the awkwardness of going to a hospital as a masked anything.
I have to do it. Not much choice.
My hands shake as I unbuckle the sheath holding my knife — Oliver put the arrow right between the straps — and let it fall to the floor. I brace myself as much as I can, placing my hand on the end of the arrow and shoving.
I scream.
As soon as I can move I reach back and curl my hand around the shaft on the other side, giving it a sharp yank. It clatters to the ground from my jerking hand, and I have to brace my forehead against the floor for a minute to be able to breathe in anything but tiny little gasps. I grasp at the bottle of alcohol, fumblingly removing the cap and dumping it in the direction of my leg without thinking about it.
I'm pretty sure I scream again, but the world snaps to black so quickly that I honestly don't know.
When I come to, everything stays fairly fuzzy. It takes me a few moments to remember what I was doing, and then another few to realize that I'm shaking. I drag in a breath, letting it out with a moan, and turn my attention back down to my leg. The blood has soaked the leg of my uniform, and is starting to form a neat little pool around my limb. That, that's not good.
I reclaim my wits enough to grab a curved needle with already laced thread — thank god — from the kit, and slowly push myself far enough up to be able to reach my leg. The change of position makes me dizzy, and I have to pause for a second just to breathe, but then I rip the uniform open enough to see the exit and entry wounds, and get to work. It's not a good job, and I'm pretty sure Oliver would have failed me on every training we ever did about how to sew up a wound, but damn him anyway. I slap the pads on either side, and grab a roll of bandages from the kit to wrap around them.
I collapse backwards the second I'm done, breath coming shallow, and the world swims.
I don't… I can't…
Unconsciousness has never been such a relief.
Waking up feels about as bad as some of the nastier hangovers I've ever gotten. Everything is fuzzy, and my tongue feels heavy and dry in my mouth, tasting vaguely like copper. I shift, prying my eyes partially open to stare at the grey surface in front of me.
I don't feel right.
I shift again, pushing my torso up on my right arm and immediately collapsing back again with a keening noise that I will deny I ever made. My shoulder burns, and I tilt myself onto my back to get the pressure off it, which helps a little. My vision swims, and I take several long slow blinks as I breathe that manage to clear it up. The slight white tint is my mask, which is still on, but it's also just that I'm seriously fucked up right now. I get my left arm underneath me, levering myself up to sitting through a couple attempts and a lot of dizziness.
My head drops, and I have several moments of trying not to pass out again, but I manage it. I look at my arm first, not sure if I can stomach the sight of my leg just yet. Most of my arm is covered in dried blood, flaking off me with every twitch, but at least it looks like it closed up on its own. It needs a bandage, or something, but I probably don't need to stitch it closed. Good, because I'm not totally sure I can hold a needle right now; I don't know how I managed it for my leg.
Not great, snarks a voice in my head that sounds like Oliver, and I shake my head to try and get it to go away. Which is, woah, a bad idea.
A minute or so of breathing later, and I haltingly lower my gaze to my leg. Oh, that's… that's bad. Being a little less panicked, and a little less dying, I can really appreciate the blood streaked along the floor, and pooled around my leg. That's a lot of blood. I'm seriously shocked that I'm still alive. Hooray for survival training, I guess?
On the plus side, my makeshift bandage seems to be holding up, and I'm not bleeding through it. That's good. I test it, shifting that leg, and make another of those sharp little keening noises as my vision flickers and I nearly fall over.
Woah, okay. Not— Not doing that again. Need painkillers, or something, to get me out of here. Can't be here whenever Oliver decides to get back, right?
So I'll need painkillers, antibiotics, and… and… there was something else. My arm! I need to clean off my arm, if I can get to the sink, and wrap it up. Then… fuck, what then? What do I need before I get the hell out of here? Gloves in the sink, gun on the table, as many arrows as I can carry, my knife, and it's probably a good idea to take a fair amount of extra medical supplies with me for later.
Then I head to… to… Jade. Oliver knows about Jade, and Lian. I have to warn them, get them out of Star City before he tracks them down. That's next. She didn't think I knew, but I know where she lives. It's across town, and that'll be a nightmare of a journey, but I have to do it. Jade can handle herself — god, can she — but I can't leave them to Oliver, not if I can get there. Even if I'm just a distraction, or a body in the way, I have to try and help.
I love her.
I turn, staring down at the medical kit still lying open and half ransacked next to me, and give a weak little desperate chuckle at the painkiller shot next to it. Right, I do know what the hell I'm doing sometimes. I pick it up, wincing a bit at the needle, before bracing myself. Okay, this is going to hurt like a bitch, but it'll make the pain easier so that's fine. Right? Right.
I jam the needle into my thigh, at the edge of the the bandages, and depress the plunger before I can think about it. It feels really weird, and also really painful, but I grit my teeth and shake through it. It'll get better, it'll get better, it'll get better… When my thumb hits the bottom I pull the needle back out and throw it to the side, cringing to myself. Okay, those are in my system.
Now, bandages for the arm. There's no way in hell I want to get to the sink and then realize the supplies I need are still back here. Yeah, that would be a great way to keep myself together.
Disinfectant — good on me, emptying the whole damn bottle of alcohol over my leg, smart thinking Roy — and bandages to wrap it once it's clean. There should be another bottle of alcohol in here somewhere. It takes some digging, while I pull out the bandages and the one pad I'll need, but I find one. The painkillers have started to kick in too, which feels… I laugh to myself.
Good.
I test moving my leg again, and even though it still hurts, I can do it without passing out this time. I move, slowly dragging myself to my feet through lightheadedness, a few dull explosions of pain, and some really awkward angles so I don't have to support myself on my injured leg or arm. Somehow, I get to my feet. I limp my way to the sink, leaning heavily on it once I get there, and fish my gloves out of the basin. They're still a little damp, so I can't have been unconscious for too long, right?
I turn the water on, setting my supplies to the side, and spend a few moments just leaning over it, breathing and trying not to collapse, or float off into the sky. Heavy duty painkillers do some really interesting things to your system; use not recommended unless approved by a physician. Another laugh escapes me, some mixture of a snicker and a snort. God, I'm so high right now. Better than pain though, I'm pretty sure of that.
I dip my hands into the water, splashing it up onto my arm and watching it slide in pink streaks down my skin. I try to focus, washing at it until my arm is mostly clean and at least the wound site is clear. Ugly, raw, and barely starting to scab, but clean. Dumping some of the alcohol over it stings like a bitch, and the bottle drops from my fingers into the sink, but it's not nearly as bad as my leg was. Painkillers. Woo!
My hands shake as I press the pad down over the wound and set to work winding the bandage. I have to hold one end of it in my teeth as I work — which at least gives me something to bite down on — but eventually I manage to get it tight enough to stay, and keep pressure, but not enough to cut off all circulation. Delicate balance, that. My leg seems alright so far. Good to know I can still make a decent pressure bandage when my body is trying to black out on me.
I leave the extra supplies where they are, looking around the rest of the room to figure out where the things I need are. My gun is on the table — crooked and shoved to one side, but fine — my gloves are next to me, my bow is… fuck. All the way across the room, and on the floor. I'll leave that till last then.
I start by turning to the metal table to my left; the 'quick draw' table, as I named it. Everything I could need in a moment's notice, primed and ready to go. Extra masks, extra arrows, ammo, a replacement bow. All that stuff. I lean heavily on it, unslinging the quiver from my back and letting it fall, scattering arrows across the surface.
Just plain arrows, maybe a few poisoned ones. Nothing fancy. We need the fancy to deal with metahumans, but if it's just going to be Oliver coming after me I shouldn't need anything more than some sharp things. I move on automatic, restocking my quiver with all the basics before reattaching it to my back.
Chances are good I won't be coming back here again. I should take extras too.
I reach for a spare quiver, my finger fumbling over it as I stock that one with more of the same. It hooks onto my belt, hanging down my right thigh. It's supposed to be my left, but it seems just a little stupid to put anything over there that's going to hit my leg every time I walk. Yeah, quick route to a lot of screaming and a lot of unconsciousness over there.
Right, arrows done.
I move on to the gear table to my right, slipping the magazine out of my handgun and replacing it before leaning down — bracing my shoulder against the table, because I might topple over if I don't — and slipping the gun into the holster on my right calf. I take another deep breath, straightening back up, and have to clutch at the table for a second before I can move on. I limp to my bow, taking a path along the wall so I can lean on things as I move, and clutch at one of the cabinet drawer handles to lean down and pick it up. My head swims, my vision blacks out, but I feel the limb of the bow underneath my fingers.
Last things. My knife, and some spare medical supplies. I hook my bow over my back, and somehow manage to drag myself over to the site of what definitely looks like my murder. There's nothing to grab onto here, so I give it up and just let myself sink down onto my ass.
I grab the sheath, buckling it around my right thigh — I'm going to be so horribly off balance — and making sure the knife is secure in it. I drag the medical kit over to me next, picking out some fresh rolls of bandages and a small, travel-sized container of alcohol. I tuck them away in pouches inside my belt, the ones I usually keep empty in case I find something during the night that I need to transport around. Holding things while using a bow just doesn't work the way most people want it to.
I look up at the sink, and my gloves next to it, with something close to despair, before I toughen it into resignation. Come on, Roy. You've seen people take so much more than this and be just fine.
I mean, when I worked with Talon he was always bruised and beaten all to hell every time I got a look under his suit, and he still moved like a damn god. If he could take that, I can take one arrow. I shake my head — which is still a bad idea, damn it — and force myself up. Great, my life is, that thinking of dead teammates never fails to inspire me. It's a little easier to stand this time, the painkillers really sinking in and numbing out most of the upper portion of my thigh, and I get to the sink without too much trouble. I tug my gloves on, not liking the damp fabric but really not caring enough to go find more gloves right now. I can deal.
Yeah, now comes the hell part of this. Getting across Star City when walking the length of a room is hard.
I head for the door, my teeth clenching. I'm limping heavily, but at least I can walk. I'm just hoping I don't piss my leg off too badly, and it holds closed for me. I've lost enough blood already, I don't know where I might end up if I lose any more.
Okay, so I'm not going to be able to walk across the city, and even if I could that would take way too long. With the painkillers in me, and the injury to my arm, there's no way in hell I can do the normal grappling arrow swinging thing either. My bike's outside, that might do. Oh, damn, but there's a tracker in it in case I need help but Oliver can't reach me. I don't have the concentration to disable that right now.
I open the door and shove out, glancing up at the sky. It's still night, good. I started my night when the sun wasn't quite set, and those four meetings weren't that hard, so it still being night reassures me that I wasn't unconscious for too long.
Maybe I can just take the bike out onto a main road somewhere, somewhere that I can hijack or hotwire somebody's car to get me where I'm going. No, better not to risk the bike at all. Star City is awake most of the time, I can find somebody to steal a car from no problem. We're in a residential area anyway, there's gotta be something within the block.
It's harder than I thought it would be to get up the building to Jade's apartment, even though I use the damn elevator like a normal person. Luckily, there's no one around to question why Arsenal is riding an elevator, or anyone to take advantage of my screwed up state. There's a lot of people that would love to take me apart, and now's a great time for them to do it.
I manage to get down the hall alright, and raise a hand to knock at her door. It's not as strong as I wanted it to be, but that's alright. If she's here, she'll open the door. She's a ninja, she can hear a couple not-as-strong-as-average knocks just fine. Assuming her door isn't set up to all kinds of security measures. Don't know, never been here.
I lean against the wall next to the door, all my weight off my injured leg and trying to ignore the press of my cut arm against the cheap plaster. Small pains to avoid bigger ones, it's fine. I'll be fine.
I hear it open, and drag my eyes open far enough to meet her startled dark, dark eyes and see the black, gorgeous, mess of her hair. "Arsenal?" she demands, after a moment of shock, taking me in with several long sweeps down my frame. Yeah, I probably look like shit, don't I?
"Hey," I offer, dragging a weak grin from somewhere.
She has my arm the next second, wrapping it over her shoulders and all but hauling me into her apartment. I always forget how strong she is, considering she's short too. Ninja training builds muscle or… or something.
The door shuts, and she leans me against the wall next to it as she flicks what look like at least three different locks shut. I watch her hazily, blinking and noticing the light green nightgown she's wearing, but not really taking it in. I'm too entranced by her face. By the angry angle to her eyebrows and the tight set of her jaw. She's so pretty when she's angry.
She hooks me back over her shoulder and drags me further into the dark apartment. "You wake Lian up and I swear I will poison you, Roy," she nearly snarls at me.
"Promise?" I answer groggily, and then blink as she shuts a door behind us and clicks a way too bright light on. White, tile; bathroom?
Her hands are on me, disconnecting straps and hooks to strip me of all my weapons with easy familiarity. If I didn't trust her, I'd be freaked out. These are kind of designed so people can't just take them off without my permission. I close my eyes, letting myself drift as she works, until a hard punch to my shoulder — my left, the uninjured one — snaps me back to awareness.
"You are not passing out in my bathroom, murderer." I blink, trying to focus on her, and shift a little as she tugs my gloves off and then sets on my boots.
"Love me anyway," I manage, after my brain works for long enough to come up with something to say, and she shakes her head but leans in to press a light kiss to my forehead.
"Idiot." She unhooks my belt and then pulls the top of my uniform up and off my arms — and it should probably worry me that it doesn't hurt like it probably should. Her fingers cup my face, bringing it up to meet her eyes. "Still with me?" she asks, and I lean into her touch.
"Always," I answer, and she snorts.
"Remind me to bleed you out more often, Roy. You're sweet when you're suffering from blood loss." She pulls me up, maneuvering me to lay me inside her shower. "Try not to drown, alright dumbass?" I manage a nod, and she reaches up to turn the water on. I flinch a little at the cold, but let her pull me forward and into the spray. The water runs an interesting shade of pinkish red, and I get a little fuzzy as she takes what I'm pretty sure is soap to my skin, and maybe shampoo to my hair?
I come back to myself eventually, as she snaps her fingers in front of my face. The water is off. I look up, meeting her eyes, and she arches an eyebrow. Some kind of questioning sound comes out of my mouth, and she directs my gaze down to my pants by pointing.
"Those," she informs me, "are ruined, and I'm going to cut them off you. Then I'm going to rebandage your leg, and your arm. Do you understand me?" I nod, slowly, and she sighs. "Lay down, Roy." She guides me back against the wet tile, and I stare up at the ceiling as she takes a pair of scissors to my pants.
There was something I needed to tell her, wasn't there? Something… important.
"Jesus, Roy," Jade gasps out, with a hard edge of anger. I manage to look down far enough to see that she's looking at what must be the wound in my thigh. "Were you drunk when you sewed this up? This is awful."
"Passed out," I mumble, closing my eyes against the sickening swirl of white walls and bright lights. I lose some time, coming back to the faint pressure against my thigh, and then again to a dull pain in my arm, before blacking out altogether.
The next time I wake up it's to soft sheets, and the warmth of another person next to me. I stir, and immediately there's a hand bracing against my chest as the person beside me moves.
"Roy?" I hear, at the edge of my senses, and I pry my eyes open.
"Jade," I murmur, shifting and then arching at the swamp of sharp, immediate pain. "Gah!" My leg jerks, flinching upwards, and I'm suddenly very, very awake. God, my leg.
"Yeah," she says softly, "you might not want to move for a bit. That's pretty nasty." I swallow, easing back against the bed and raising my left hand to rake back through my hair and take a fistful of it, to ground me. "I fixed your job," she comments, shifting to sit next to me, pressed against my right side and underneath the sprawl of my arm. "It's sewed up right now, and it looks like everything is holding. You should be fine."
"Doesn't feel that way," I mutter, and she makes a soft sound. I flick my eyes open as she touches my face, wincing at the gentle pressure against the — now that it's not blanked out by everything else — aching left side of my face. Right. One punch, and one backhand with Oliver's bow. There's probably some pretty nasty bruises over there.
"If it hurts you're still alive," she mocks, then sighs and slips off the bed. "Come on, I'll help you to the table but I'm not feeding you in bed. I am not that kind of woman, and I know you can pull your own weight just fine."
I manage a grin, accepting her hand when she offers it. "We wouldn't take each other any other way, right?"
It's true. I met Jade as a person, not as Cheshire, and I fell in love with Jade, not the mask. When she showed up in my window, Lian slung across her back, I was freaked out, but in the end it didn't matter. What are a couple masks between love, right? Our jobs don't define us as people, usually. But part of it is definitely that we both need to be totally independent. If I had to see her, or she had to see me, or we needed each other to survive, we would have both been dead a long time ago.
I clench my teeth to not shout when she pulls me up, gripping her wrist with probably enough force to bruise. It says something about us that she doesn't even mention it, pulling my arm around her shoulders and all but carrying me out of what must be the bedroom and into some kind of combined living room and kitchen area. She drops me off at the table none too gently, into a chair, and heads for the kitchen. The wood's cold against my back, and I'm thankful that apparently she managed to save my boxers in her scissoring last night.
"Try not to pass out on me again, hm, Roy? That'd be pretty sad even for you."
"Yeah, working on it." I lean back, stretching my leg out and taking slow, even breaths to try and keep the worst of the pain at bay.
"So?" she demands, dropping a bowl of some kind of sugary looking cereal in front of me. "You have some explaining to do."
"Cereal?" I ask roughly, and she gives a flippant little shrug.
"My sister left it here. It's full of sugar, and looks unappetizing enough to be something you'd enjoy." I give her a small grin, reaching across the table — despite the unpleasant twinge of my arm — to take her hand. She rolls her eyes, but lets me. "Explain, now. You should have been at a hospital, or under Red Archer's care, with injuries like this. You should not have been bleeding at my front door. The address of which you are not supposed to have."
I ignore the last bit, taking a bite and savoring the explosion of taste on my tongue, even though it hurts to chew. "Yeah, well Oliver is the one who shot me, so…" I get two more bites in before the silence gets to me, and I look up. Jade is completely, utterly, still. It's… It's really fucking creepy. "Jade?"
"Why?" she demands.
I drop the spoon, straightening up and grasping her hand a little firmer. "Owlman," I explain, trying to cushion things, "he stopped by and apparently told Oliver about the two of us. He came at me while I was restocking."
She yanks her hand out of my grip, pulling away from the table, and I try to follow her instinctively but the pain doubles me over against the table with a gasp. "He knows, and you came here?" she hisses. "You put Lian in danger like that?!"
"No, it's not—"
"What if I hadn't been here, Roy?! Or what if I hadn't stayed up all night making sure you didn't die on me and he came for her? What were you thinking?" She's so angry, lips twisted in a snarl and hands curled like she wants to tear me apart. Considering one of her regular weapons is sedative and poison laced nails, that's probably not too far off the mark.
"Jade, I didn't, I swear. I would never have come here if I thought he could track me, I was careful." I manage to get to my feet, leaning heavily against the table but unable to sit in the face of her rage. "You know I can be careful. I would never put Lian, or you, in that kind of danger. Never." I hold out a hand to her, asking, pleading.
She glares at me, but huffs out a breath and steps forward, taking my hand. "Sit down," she demands, and then more softly, "idiot."
I collapse back into the chair, squeezing my eyes shut for a second and tilting my head back to somehow will my leg into not hurting so badly. "Never, Jade. Never," I repeat. Her free hand slips through my hair, and I lean into it. "Believe me?"
"Yes," she says, grudgingly, but with Jade that's like a full fledged apology. I've never loved anyone else like her, even with her temper, and her colder, rougher moments. "Eat your food," she orders, tugging loose from my grip and stepping away, moving back into the kitchen area and starting to clear the counter area.
I smile at her back, reaching back for the cereal again.
So, what happens now? It's kind of hard to plan a future when you're bleeding out and dying, or trying to make it across the city with a hole in your leg, so I really hadn't thought this far ahead. Okay so, Oliver's thrown me out. Who knows if that's permanent? We've never had a fight like this, but we're family. He's probably not going to totally throw me out over this, right? He'll calm down eventually, and I can talk to him then. We should be alright. I mean, he's had all kinds of flings behind my back, I'm sure I can have one.
So, that's fine. I'll tough things out for a month or so, let myself heal and let him calm down, and then I'll fix things.
Good, planning done.
I finish the cereal, which she snags off the table, and look over at my arm. It looks a lot better than the half-assed job I pulled off last night, when I was high on painkillers. The edges are all tucked in, and the bandages are a crisp white and not stained with smears of my own blood from where it was left on my hands. I let my gaze fall down to my leg. That looks much better too. Not bleeding and firmly wrapped and tied to keep it that way. And—
I blink, staring down.
"These are not my boxers," I inform the room at large. I hear Jade snort from the kitchen, as I stare at the offending dark blue pair of underwear. These are not the same tighter, black ones that I had underneath my costume. Hey, sometimes the pants gets ripped, and I prefer not to flash people with weird colors that don't match my normal color scheme. It kind of ruins the effect. "I don't own blue boxers, do I?" I… I think maybe I might have one pair, somewhere, but when I'm diving in and out of costume it's better not to have to change underwear too if I can help it. All colors but red and black pretty much fell by the wayside. I look up, at Jade, as she sets aside my bowl in a drying rack. "Where did you get these?"
She turns to me, wiping her hands off in a dish towel and dropping it off on the counter. She's smirking, one eyebrow raised. "Are you asking the League of Shadows member how she found you boxers?" I blink, kind of gaping, and her smirk gets a little edge to it. "I have pants for you, too."
"But, where?" I sputter, and she laughs, walking towards me.
"Relax," she tells me, coming to sit on the table corner next to me. "I got some of my minions to break into your room and steal them. It wasn't so hard, and I wasn't going to leave you stuck here from lack of pants."
I… wow. Okay, one scenario that didn't even cross my mind. I grin up at her. "Girlfriend asks her ninja buddies to break into my room and steal my pants and underwear. There's a first."
"Oh?" she asks imperiously. "Have you had other girlfriends with ninja 'buddies'?"
I lean forward, touching her thigh and pressing a soft kiss to her right knee. "Absolutely not. That's all you, Jade." She gives a faint smile, and reaches down to gently trace fingers over the side of my face again. Which hurts, but not nearly as badly as my leg, so whatever.
"Come on." She slips off the table and offers me her hand again, and with a wince I take it. I've got a little practice now, and I manage to swing my weight and brace against the table enough that it doesn't hurt as blindingly as the first time. At least she's tall enough — just two inches shorter than me, which really isn't anything — to be able to help me move easily. If she were shorter, this could have been totally impossible.
She helps me over to the couch, coffee table in front of it, and across from a TV hung up against the wall, and helps me down onto it. "Appreciated," I say with a grin as soon as I can manage it, and she gives a little scoff.
"Stay," she orders me, and I raise my arms in surrender.
My back is against the arm of the couch, legs stretched out along the cushions, and I take the opportunity as she disappears back behind me and out of my range of vision to take a look at myself. Apart from my arm, and my leg, and whatever kind of bruises are on the left side of my face, the only other injury I've got is a fairly large bruise on my left side that must be from Oliver's boot. It aches a bit, but I think it's just a bruise for the most part. Definitely the smallest of my injuries.
I hear a door close, and the nearly silent pad of Jade's footsteps — nearly because she's not trying, not because she's not that good — across the carpet as she comes back towards me. She rounds back into my vision, and my throat goes tight. In her arms is a small bundle of blankets, which she kneels down to shift into my arms. I take it without thinking, shifting the mass of fabric until I can see in to wide green eyes — my eyes — and a head nearly covered in soft black hair.
"Lian," I murmur, reaching in to meet the tiny hand that grasps up at me. I've spent time with our daughter, of course, and with Jade, but not enough. Holding her for an hour or two in snatched moments between Jade's heroism and my work is rough. It's hard to be away from her for so long; so every time I see her feels like that first time that Jade put her in my arms and informed me that I should get my shit together, because she was mine.
Lian coos up at me, lips curling in a tiny smile, and my heart melts. She's mine, how amazing is that? I swallow, cradling her and letting her fingers curl around one of mine, grasping tight. Jade moves up to sit on the arm behind me, her lips pressing against the crown of my head as she leans over me.
"How is she?" I ask, unable to help myself.
"Still a baby," Jade answers quietly, her hand grasping at my other shoulder for balance. Her nails dig into my skin a bit, but I barely even notice. "Amazingly, considering you're her father, she's a perfect angel."
I tilt my head back into her, looking up to meet her eyes. "Considering me?" I say with a soft laugh. "Try both of us, Jade."
She gives a careless shrug. "Fair enough, I suppose I can't put all the blame on you." Her fingers massage into my shoulder, and I close my eyes to enjoy the feeling. Despite all the pain, and the aches, the simple touch of her hand still feels good. Her other hand slips across my scalp, dragging through my hair, and I give a soft sigh.
"You're distracting me from Lian," I let her know, aiming for a grumble but coming out more as a vague notification.
"She'll be alright," Jade answers easily, alternating between lightly scratching and massaging at my scalp, which feels so good. I hum another breath of satisfaction, pushing up into her hand like a cat.
"She's got you," I murmur sleepily, feeling my breathing slow. "How could she not be?" I lower my other arm to cradle Lian as well, very gently pulling my finger from her grasp.
"Fool that you are, I still love you, Roy."
"Mmmm… Love you too."
