A/N: I don't abandon anything.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Days without Chloe Sullivan: 83

He closed his eyes for a second, afraid of both the inevitable nausea and the possibility of failure. That either the General ran off or Mia was left behind.

Oliver took a deep breath. If the General ran off, he couldn't have gone very far, and if Mia had been left behind, he would be able to go back to find her. It wasn't too late to go back- it couldn't be.

He slowly opened his eyes, and saw Mia on the red couch next to the General's body. The sight of the two of them led Oliver to let out the breath he didn't even realize that he had been holding. They were all safe- all alive.

He watched as Mia rolled the General over to his side before pulling something out of him. The man convulsed for a moment before settling back into his slumber. Mia reached for the white hand towel draped over the arm of the couch and wiped the blood off of the arrowhead. Taser arrow.

"I figured it would buy us more time to clean up a little bit. You know what they say about first impressions", Bart said from behind him.

Oliver looked at Bart before glancing down at himself. While Bart was completely free from the dirt and grime, he was covered in it. But he had a change of clothes in his duffel bag, a clean white shirt and everything.

He knew why Bart had Mia shoot the General with that taser arrow. To buy him time to come up with a plan. "Mind if I use your shower?"

Bart gestured in the direction of the bathroom. "Knock yourself out."

Oliver nodded silently before grabbing his duffel bag from behind the couch and walking over to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He set the bag down on the floor and caught the sight of himself in the mirror.

There were dark circles underneath his eyes and a bruise that was forming quickly on his left cheek. His fingernails were slightly stained with the blood that came with retracting arrows from bodies that had fallen.

He took off his shirt and coughed as the dust scattered around the room. His body was littered with the scars of his past, the clean areas of skin only an indication of places that would be marred in the future.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gun that he had been using, resting it on the counter. He stared at it for a moment. This was the evidence. Last time, it was a toy bomb. This time, there was nobody else to take the blame for what he had done- it was all on him.

He removed the rest of his clothing and stepped into the shower, turning on the water. He winced as the water came into contact with some of the cuts on his arms.

He could almost feel the touch of cotton on his arm. "I thought you said it didn't hurt."

I lied.

He still had no idea how the General was going to magically trust a perfect stranger with the location of his niece. From the outside, it must have looked like everything was perfectly under control. He was used to controlled missions. This was the farthest thing from controlled, and Oliver hated that.

He wondered just how much the General knew about what Chloe used to do on a daily basis, and what she was planning. But did anybody really know Chloe in the end?

He remembered something that Clark said to him a long time ago. "She doesn't know what Chloe does- at this point, she knows Chloe as well as her sister does!"

Oliver reached for the open bottle of shampoo, and squeezed the gel out onto his hand before applying it to his hair. He hadn't forgotten Bart's assumption that Clark was here in Kenya with him. That's how it should have been.

He closed his eyes as soapy water travelled down from his hair to his face. He heard Chloe's voice from that USB video in his head. "Well, family to family, your sense of safety is more important than reliability."

Safety was more important to her than reliability. Safety…

His jaw clenched as a different voice entered his mind. "Make that article disappear, and you'll be a free woman."

Lex. Relax, Lex can't hurt anybody anymore. He was dead.

"Too ashamed to admit that you were really responsible for killing Lex Luthor? YOU DIDN'T THINK TWICE BEFORE BLAMING ME FOR IT!"

Oliver touched a hand to the back of his neck, and massaged it gently before he reached for a bar of soap and started scrubbing. Lex was gone, Toyman was gone. They were all gone. His parents, the family that murdered them, and Toyman. They were all gone. Even Chloe.

He stood directly underneath the water, lines from Chloe's old articles from the Torch and Daily Planet running through his mind. Make that article disappear. Even Lex knew that Chloe had the ability of making knowledge disappear and appear at will. Incriminating knowledge, useful knowledge, she had a handle of it all.

"I was hoping that another Lane could find her. Even if she's a Sullivan by marriage."

As well as her sister does. Another Lane could find her. Her- Lucy.

Chloe was able to find Lucy, even if she was off of the grid. Which meant that before, Lucy wiped herself. She knew how to do it- she didn't disappear because Chloe made it that way like the others did. Which meant that both women knew how to find other people who were off of the grid.

Oliver didn't know much about the General's personality, and before today, he had never met the man, even if he had a past with his eldest daughter. But he did know two things- that he hated almost everybody, and that he was almost unnaturally patriotic.

Oliver shut off the water, and reached for a towel. How on earth was he going to convince a loyal man to give a complete stranger the location of his daughter, when he was really trying to look for his niece?

He dried off and dressed quickly, hoping that Bart had some sort of backup plan in case he didn't. But when Oliver opened the bathroom door and stepped out, he saw the hopeful look on his face.

Bart had grown a lot- from what he had seen, the entire team had since Doomsday. Bart was just a little kid when he had met him, stealing food for his own survival. He had changed quickly when Oliver had started up the team. Chloe told him years ago that it was because he had met Clark in Smallville prior. The desire to change was always in him.

Where Oliver believed that Clark trusted in humanity blindly, Bart looked to the man for a moral compass. But the glance of hope that Bart gave him proved otherwise. It reminded Oliver that although Clark had met him first, he was the one who gave Bart opportunity.

And while Clark had fed him for a couple of nights before Bart went on his own way, Oliver gave him a place to live, a team to trust, and a way to provide for himself. While Clark planted the idea of honesty in his head, Oliver gave Bart the option of living honestly.

And although he couldn't have helped Bart without Clark's initial assistance, Oliver could see that it wasn't Clark that he was looking for now. Bart wasn't looking behind him, or glancing at the door, waiting for Clark to speed in and fix things. He was looking straight ahead, and Oliver wasn't going to let him down.

Oliver took a deep breath, and looked at the General. He didn't hit him with that arrow, and because of that, he had no idea when the man would wake up. And if the General's patriotism matched his file, then he probably held the same opinion of heroes as most of the papers. That they were vigilantes.

He looked at Bart, who was sitting on the arm of the couch, and then looked at his own clean clothing. And then he spotted Mia on the couch, still in her red leather. She didn't have a change of clothing here, and if the General saw her, there was no telling what he would do to her. The main priority was finding Chloe, but not at the risk of anybody else. She wouldn't have wanted that, and Oliver wouldn't be able to forgive himself. Too many innocent lives were lost tonight.

"Mia, can you go get him a glass of water or something for when he wakes up?" he asked

"He's not even up yet."

Oliver shot Bart a look, and gestured towards the duffel bag that was now filled with dirty clothing.

Bart got up from the arm of the chair, and slowly backed up behind the couch and Mia before speeding out of the room. Oliver waited for a second before he saw the flash of red sped into the kitchen and then back to where he was standing before.

"You know what?" Bart asked "I'll go with you, Mia. I think there's some pizza in the fridge, and I'm starving."

Mia gave Oliver and questioning look. "Go", he gestured towards the kitchen. "I'm not going to let him out of my sight."

She got up and the two of them walked over to the kitchen as Oliver reached for Mia's quiver and hid it in the bathroom, looking over his shoulder every couple of seconds and making sure that he didn't hear any motion other than his own.

He sat back down at the couch, beside the General's sleeping body, and stared at the floor. He had no idea what to do with this man.

He sat rooted in his seat, contemplating how he was going to even start a conversation with the guy for ten minutes. And then suddenly, the body shot up, and Oliver felt a hand wrap around his throat.