Chapter 16: Creeping Death.

There are many misconceptions about the League of Assassins. Some of them are valuable enough that they are not disproven. For instance, the notion that their work is done only in the Asian and American continents. As it turns out, every country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, has a League safehouse and cell waiting for their moment to be activated should such a thing be needed. There is even a team capable of carrying out missions in Antarctica should the need arise. (Not living in Antarctica, of course. Ra's Al Ghul is many things, but a man given to thinking of his members as tools instead of people is not one of them.) This rumor that no League assets could catch someone running, for example, a child safety ring in Kyrgyzstan or Equatorial Guinea helped to make them seem like actual phantoms.

Others, though, require actual invalidating. For instance, the idea that there is no honor, no overarching moral code, to what the League does. THIS could not be further from the truth. It has been long stated, and even written in the ancient tomes regarding its construction, that any League member that refuses to assist anyone in times of great unnatural tragedy can consider their membership, and their life, forfeit. As the decades passed, and the definition of what was great unnatural tragedy changed, the rule did not. As far back as the shelling of London during World War II, one can find League members using their skills to find and bring to justice enemy sleeper cells, repurposing safehouses into bomb shelters, and generally serving the balance through non-violent means.

That, as it happened, led perfectly to the 2nd rule that had been written down since the league's formation. No law enforcement officer was to be interfered with unless absolutely necessary. Police were doing their best to provide justice, weak as it could sometimes be, and as such they were treated as fellow travelers. And, if you were foolish enough to harm the lives of the family of a fellow traveler, the great plagues of Egypt would seem like a minor inconvenience by the time the League was done with you.

5 Years ago, on the Korean peninsula…

Talia Al Ghul was not, by both nature and nurture, what anyone would call a warm or even emotional person. She saw all human interaction as moves on a chessboard, and people merely as the pieces to be moved and guided until they found the place where she needed them to be.

But if she was capable of emotions, of caring and empathy, she would admit to having some amount of pride in her latest student. After all, this Carter Bowen was a doctor. He had been trained for years in where to deliver the perfect cut for maximum blood loss, and minimal pain. It was really not that hard of a thing to teach him how to use those specific talents in the service of avenging his slights, even if those slights happened to be wholly self-inflicted.

But, even despite this pride at his improvement, she did worry. It was the type of worrying that was less about the welfare of her students, because to be honest, the safety of those who fell under her tutelage was lower on her list of concerns than where she parked her car. Considering Talia Al Ghul had never driven a car a day in her entire life, this should give you some idea of where she placed that particular problem.

Nonetheless, her big worry with her new archer was that he seemed focused on revenge against a small subset of people rather than sharing her goal of breaking the League of Assassins. This, if she couldn't somehow get him moving in the same direction as her, could be a problem.

So, after much deliberation, she decided to let him slake his urges for vengeance. Talia knew the rules of the League, and knew that what Carter Bowen was planning would drag their attention to Starling City. They would be forced to respond, and to do so with overwhelming force. That, of course, would bring them right into her crosshairs. And her father, and traitorous sister, would never see the trap closed around them until it was too late.

A Few Weeks Later, in Starling City

There was a time, Dinah Lance thought idly as she stirred a wooden spoon in a large pot of homemade beef Bolognese, where this would never have happened. In the 70's, when she helped to keep Starling City's women and children safe from any criminal who dared to inflict pain on them, she never imagined being someone who could enjoy cooking. All of her life, every inch and ounce of it, was about training to be the best that she could be. But then, as tends to happen, real life interfered and did so with a tremendous amount of force.

First, she fell in love. Even now, decades after it happened, she remembered how they met like it was yesterday. She had helped to break up a drug ring on the west side of town, and stumbled into a handsome-looking beat cop who took one look at her before realizing that he was standing in front of the Canary. Despite himself, Quentin Larry Lance did the only thing any man in the 70's could have done. He asked her out.

And then, they went on one date, and another, and another. Soon she told him her secret, and then they were married. On her wedding day, she promised to give it up. To stop being the vigilante she had been, because she had found something just as important.

And then she had her two daughters, Sara and Laurel, and she knew she made the right decision. But she wanted to pass on her lessons, the things she knew she could never give up. How to do it, though, without letting them in on what she used to be was an open question.

After talking about it with Quentin, though, she came up with what she thought was a solution. First, she'd take a job as a law professor. After all, she had kept up with her education after having taken classes at Starling City University's world-class law program. That way, her daughters could see the value in understanding what you could and could not do under the law.

Then, Quentin would sign them up for self-defense classes. Lord knows, in this city, you needed to know everything you could. The concept of training with them, keeping up her skills just in case the unthinkable happened and she needed to go back into action, didn't have the appeal it once did.

But then, just a week ago, it became something that needed to have appeal. Her youngest daughter, Sara, told her she was the Orange Dragon. In an instant, everything made sense. The funny way she walked and how much more food she was consuming wasn't about her possibly having become in the family way, but instead one of the side effects of heroism that she remembered from her own past life.

Then, Sara explained breathlessly, she had heard rumors that Carter Bowen was training to try and kill her husband and it would be in her best interests if she was trained to defend herself.

That meant, of course, she had to tell her youngest daughter that she was once a vigilante. Surprisingly, and hearteningly, Sara didn't mind. She was actually happy.

Over the days after, she got back into training. Sara's teachers taught her new forms of martial arts she had never heard of, primarily focusing on kickboxing from everywhere around the world. Apparently, and she had never thought of this, she and her daughter had the exact body type for all forms of kickboxing to be their primary hand-to-hand combat choice.

And tonight, she was going to tell Quentin everything. They had wanted to keep the secret from him, because they weren't sure how he'd take it. So they made his favorite meal, beef Bolognese over ziti, and hoped that would be enough.

Meanwhile, in a car on the Easley Bridge…..

Detective First Grade Quentin Lance was waiting eagerly to get home. His wife, the woman he had loved ever since he first met her as a beat cop in the 1970's, told him she had something she wanted to talk with him about.

He hoped it was that they had found Laurel alive somewhere, that his baby girl could be back with the rest of his family. If he was being honest with himself, he didn't much mind the idea of her wanting to be with Oliver Queen either. Sure, he'd always play the part of disapproving father. Seeing how many different ways he could try and convince Queen that he had a .44-caliber bullet with his name on it if he ever screwed around on Laurel made the days of doing paperwork on his kitchen table a little less like drudgery.

But also, and this is something he would admit to Dinah tonight, he knew Oliver was the best thing that could have EVER happened to Laurel. At her best, she was a little tightly wound, a little too over-competitive. Queen, though? He knew how to make her relax.

What did Dinah want, though? That question kept nagging at him. So he was thinking about it as he was stuck in traffic on the bridge.

As he was lost in thought, though, Quentin Lance never saw the archer on the top of the bridge. He never noticed the man nock an explosive-tipped arrow into a compound bow, and aim it at his car's gas tank.
The last thought he had was how much he was looking forward to seeing his family.

BOOM! Quentin Lance died painlessly. The explosion knocked him unconscious and he died instantly.

On the top of the bridge, covered in shadow, Carter Bowen smiled. He had got what he wanted. Now, to leave and help his teacher get what she wanted.

A few hours later…

Dinah Lance was worried. More to the point she was terrified. If Quentin had to be late, whether it was trial prep he had forgotten about or some paperwork for his closed cases took too long, he always called. He usually would offer to bring home pizza, or use one of the delivery services available to make sure that she ate until he could get home.

This, though? This felt wrong.

So, despite her own fear, she waited for the doorbell to ring.

But before that could happen, her back door opened up and her daughter Sara, Thea Queen, and one of Sara's teachers walked into the room. And in Sara's eyes, Dinah saw it all. She knew.

Quentin Lance was dead. Someone had murdered him. No, scratch that. Carter Bowen had murdered him. It was now time for the Canary to rise from her ashes, and scream and cry until everyone knew what had been done.