Chapter 15: When Enough is Enough
Five Years Ago, in Nanda Parbat….
Ra's Al Ghul had many skills, most of them generally suited to assassination or the dark arts that might be related to them. He was, for instance, an excellent swordsman, archer, and hand-to-hand fighter. But the skill that he tried the least to use was the one that was in sharp display at this exact moment.
Ra's Al Ghul was PISSED. And, at least for his two most trusted lieutenants, he didn't have to say a word indicating he was. This was because Nyssa Al-Ghul and Al-Dhiyb, the former Slade Wilson, were also PISSED. None of them had to say anything. Each one of this dark trinity radiated anger from their very souls, like a light that could be felt by anyone who was around them.
So when Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari walked into the main training hall in Nanda Parbat, they could tell that their teachers were angry. In impertinent thoughts they smartly refused to voice out loud, both of them thought that people in the town far away might be able to tell that someone in this impeccably-hidden mountain fortress was angry.
"So, explain it to me again," said Ra's calmly, making them all worried as a calm Ra's was usually the last thing anyone saw before a blade or an arrowhead found its way through their eye socket. "Am I correct in understanding that the Black Spider Clan attempted to board a League vessel in international waters?"
"Yes, your grace," they all said in unison. Not one of them, trained killers all, wanted to do anything to infuriate a man who could kill them all as easily as normal people might cough.
"And am I to further understand that it was only due to the training of my two horsemen, and their students, that an entire cell of the League was saved from total elimination?" said Ra's, his calm still intact even as he idly twirls a Persian dagger in his hand.
"Yes, your grace" they again say in unison, trying to keep their concern as to how completely calm Ra's is being out of their voices.
"This feels to me like a declaration of war. I do not know the reason for their declarations. Someone less temperate, easier to act on rash anger, might want to agree to their request. But wisdom has told me to wait, to properly inform ourselves of our opponents. Instruct the intelligence networks to bring me all the information on this Black Spider Clan" orders Ra's, causing everyone to scurry to either do as they have been told or to continue their training.
As everyone had long ago learned, trying to be the person who disobeyed an order from Ra's Al Ghul was a fool's errand. He could, with the ease of ordering a coffee, kill anyone in this room. They knew it, and so did he. It was that fact that ensured he would never be the sort of person who took disobedience well, or that anyone but the truly crazed would try it. His anger would burn off soon, replaced by focus and a desire to know everything he could in order to figure out the best way to proceed.
His name was Ra's Al Ghul, and that came with the responsibility to know when enough is enough.
Meanwhile, Five Years Ago in Starling City….
Carter Bowen was pissed, and he wasn't handling it well.
You see, in the society pages of Starling City, Carter Bowen was a rising star. A doctor of some renown, who had easily stepped into the vacuum left by Oliver Queen for handsome men who seemed to have one supermodel after another on his arm. And, to be honest, he played the part with aplomb. He was charming and funny, and always easy with a joke.
But beneath the polished veneer? Carter Bowen had a different set of skills. You see, unbeknownst to just about everyone, he was a drug dealer. It was the perfect cover. Work in a high-end hospital, where you have access to the sort of bleeding-edge pharmaceuticals, and you make more money than you know what to do with.
So, for a good long time, that was his side hustle. He was a respected doctor, and a regular medical consultant to every TV program filming in the Pacific Northwest. Who could, possibly, suspect that someone that honest actually be creating not just dozens, but THOUSANDS, of addicts?
For one, Detective 1st Grade Quentin Larry Lance did. Ever since the Queen's Gambit went down, he had sobered up and focused all of his instincts on being the best detective he could be. On this, he took motivation from his daughter.
He never got to see it, but he knew exactly what type of lawyer Laurel would have been if she had graduated from Starling City Law School. She would have found a thread, no matter how small or insignificant, and kept pulling at it until she unraveled every plot any criminal could have had.
So, in her honor, her father would do the same. So, he started cataloging the big problems that the city was having and decided to try and see if he could solve one tendril of them at a time. Nothing ridiculous, like trying to be one detective solving an entire city's drug problem, but maybe taking one dealer off the street could be a start.
And as he did that, one dealer at a time, he started to notice that the quality of the drugs sent to the lab to be analyzed was increasing. It seemed a weird thing, but he started leaning on those he arrested to find out their suppliers. Eventually, using all of his charm, intimidation, and more threats than he was ok with, Quentin figured out what was going on.
He didn't bring it to his bosses. That seemed dangerous. Who amongst them were on the take? Instead, he used his gut to find one of the attorneys in the DA's office who he could be absolutely sure wasn't on the take. Once that happened, he got his warrant and he moved to arrest Carter Bowen.
In this moment, as his well-laid plans fell apart around him, Carter Bowen was angrier than he had ever been. But the target of that anger wasn't at himself, no. It wasn't even at the low-level street dealers selling his product.
Rather, his anger was directed towards Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance. He reasoned, in the sort of logic that only comes from being so angry that you can't think straight, that if they hadn't been on that damned boat, Quentin would still be in the bottle and wouldn't have been clear-headed enough to see what he was doing.
So, as his life fell apart, Carter Bowen vowed revenge. But anger does strange things. Everyone told him he'd think differently in the cold light of day.
The next morning, though? He still vowed revenge.
One day, his anger found a voice, and a name. He was sitting in a bar, raging against all of the people who had "ruined his life", when a striking Eurasian woman approached him with a strange offer.
"Hello, Mr. Bowen. My name is Talia. How would you like to be capable of avenging every slight that anyone has inflicted upon you? Furthermore, how would you like to rebuild Starling City in your own image?" Talia asks, looking and sounding like someone descended from old wealth and class.
A normal person, one whose mind was not as clouded by anger and vengefulness, would have rejected this offer out of hand. Some strange woman sidles up to you at a bar and invites you to destroy the city you've lived in your whole life? That's not anything you want.
But when you're so angry you can't see straight; logic takes a holiday. So, Carter Bowen agrees. And he goes down a path of darkness he will follow to its brutal, bloody end. Because, as he will admit with the last breaths he takes as a free man, he never could tell when enough was enough.
Meanwhile, back in Nanda Parbat….
My name is Oliver Queen. This sentence used to come before trying to get free drinks at a bar, or preferential seating at a restaurant or nightclub somewhere. The man who said it then was spoiled, and arrogant. He saw himself as a partier, a social climber always in search of the next thrill.
In Nanda Parbat, though, that sentence was delivered for a different reason. It was less a demand for pleasure, and more a reminder of faith. If he didn't want to go completely insane, Al-Sahim would remind himself that his name is Oliver Queen for as many times as he needed to.
Lord knows he had seen it enough times. There had been plenty who had walked into Nanda Parbat, angry men and women driven by the need to see justice done, and slowly lost themselves to the missions. A bit at a time, they ceased to be people, and became tools instead.
Sadder still because from what he had learned of Ra's, this would never be what he wanted for any of them. The League of Assassins was never about unthinking automatons. The truth was that becoming an assassin, a bringer of justice to those who committed crimes of the sort that drew their attention, required you to think, to remember the joy of life.
So, and he did this with Al-Kanari too, he reminded himself day and night that he was Oliver Queen. He kept little trinkets from home, pictures of his mother and sister Thea. On missions, he would buy things that he thought they might want.
He said it, most often, when he was struck with the realization that he was doing something the old him would never have done. Like right now, for instance.
"My name is Oliver Queen, and I am reading 12th century Japanese fiction to try and figure out if we can ascertain the code names of the cream of the crop of the Black Spider Clan" he said disbelievingly to himself.
And then, all of a sudden, Nyssa Al-Ghul appeared behind him like a ghost coming through the mist.
"Nyssa!" he stated, startled despite all the training he had already received on sensing when people were in the room.
"Mr. Queen, I did knock" said Nyssa amusedly, sounding like an infinitely more lethal version of that nanny in the last movie Thea and him had watched together before he left on the Queen's Gambit. What was it called? Oh yes, Nanny McPhee.
"Wait. You called me Mr. Queen. Not Al-Sahim. Is there a reason for this?" said Oliver worriedly, thinking that this would be where his head would be removed from his body.
"Yes, Mr. Queen. I am calling you this because I have heard what you have been trying to do, to keep yourself from becoming something you will not recognize. I approve of this, and I will suggest that we make it part of the training for all new initiates. We need not become monsters to fight them. Now, back to your work Mr. Queen" says Nyssa, and with that she eases her way out of the room.
Well, he thought to himself, that was different. But perhaps, Oliver Queen still had some value here. Because, it sounded like to him, Nyssa Al-Ghul had figured out when enough was enough.