A/N: Just an FYI, there's a lot of talking this chapter. It's more of a transitions chapter.

Guest4587: I have mixed feelings about the crossover. It was certainly their most ambitious undertaking yet and it did succeed in pulling off what I believed they would never do: merge the Earths. But on the other hand… my favorite character still died. That makes it kinda tough to really enjoy, no matter how noble the death.

Oh, and yeah, don't get me started on the utter bullshit that is the Lena knowing issue. She's supposed to be smarter than both Lex and Lillian and THOSE TWO figured out who Kara was. It's complete bullshit that Lena, who grew up with the Luthor standards, would not see through Kara's frankly poor disguise with frequent contact as both Kara and Supergirl. Great, now I started myself on it.

Chapter Sixteen

Oliver Queen looked into the medbay at the D.E.O., seeing the slumped, huddled form of Kara Danvers with a blanket pulled over her. Again, he felt an old, familiar anger and sense of purpose surging in him, something he hadn't felt for two years. Oliver walked into the medbay, taking a seat in the chair facing Kara's back. "I really don't want to talk anymore, Alex," Kara mumbled, her voice flat and emotionless. Oliver recognized the tactic well, a method of concealing one's true feelings and thoughts by adopting an emotionless mask. Kara probably saw it as embracing her alien side and shunning her human side, but it was used by plenty of humans as well to ignore the pain they were suffering, emotional, mental, or physical. Oliver had employed it himself several times.

"Well, I'm not Alex," Oliver said quietly, and Kara slowly turned over onto her other side, using her arms to navigate the bed so her back didn't touch the bed itself, keeping her back wounds from brushing the surface. Her forearms trembled slightly holding up her weight, and Oliver saw the wince that crossed her features, as if a twinge of pain had shot through her. It wasn't easy navigating around fresh, half-healed wounds. Oliver knew that better than anyone. "And I don't want you to talk if that's not what you want. But I hope you'll at least listen to me." Oliver smiled softly. "I know a thing or two about being tortured." Oliver stood, shrugging of his suit jacket.

"What are you doing?" Kara asked.

"Our talk requires a visual aid," Oliver replied as he unbuttoned his cuffs and began to unbutton his shirt. Kara remained silent, as her powers were still on the fritz and she didn't know if she could use her X-Ray Vision to see the scars he wanted to show her. Soon enough, Oliver was bare-chested and had retaken his seat. "This is the first scar I ever received," Oliver said, tapping the old arrow wound on his shoulder. "It was given to me by a man who would later become my teacher and help me learn how to survive the island I washed up on. His name was Yao Fei, and he shot me to protect me. There were mercenaries on the island hunting him and they were merciless to anyone who fell into their clutches." Oliver brushed his hand over the scars on his chest and stomach from where Bill Wintergreen had cut into him, tensing as though still expecting the Red Death to force him to flashback to when he received them. "I received these five weeks after I arrived on Lian Yu. I got captured by the mercenaries, and their leader had a man named Bill Wintergreen, former A.S.I.S. turned mercenary, torture me for information on Yao Fei's location. I refused again and again."

Kara's eyes studied the scars that littered Oliver's torso. There were so many of them. Oliver brushed what looked like burn scars on his sides with one hand. "These were given to me over a year later by Slade Wilson, Wintergreen's former partner and a man who had been my brother on Lian Yu until I made a choice that he took as a betrayal." Oliver smiled weakly. "On my world, I was responsible for the creation of Deathstroke, and I know exactly what kind of vengeance Slade can inflict if slighted." Oliver turned slightly to the right so that Kara could see the dragon tattoo on his back. "He put that there as well, so that I would always remember the choice that broke our friendship and created our rivalry, a rivalry that led him to lay siege to my city with an army of men just like him only days after he murdered my mother in front of me and threatened the last person on his list: the woman I loved, the woman I had loved when he knew me on the island. Laurel Lance. I tricked him, but I nearly lost Laurel anyways that night. Her sister saved her and the other woman with us, Felicity Smoak."

"He treated it like a business transaction," Kara whispered to herself. "He was calm in everything he did to me. He didn't gain any satisfaction from what I could tell. It was just a job to him. The only time he showed any emotion is when he whipped me, because that was when he knew he was leaving a permanent mark on me." Kara's eyes drifted to the burn scars and the tattoo. "How did you keep going after what he did to you on Earth-1?"

"I'll be honest with you, Kara," Oliver said quietly, leaning forward. "I lived with it because I believed him to be dead. I drove an arrow through his eye in our last confrontation in the waters off the island, and I thought he was dead until he showed up in Starling City. Even to this day, as far as I know, he now rots away on Lian Yu, where I put him after I captured him. That was when I was trying to be a hero after being a killer for so long. It wasn't easy and I sometimes wonder if I made the right choice in not killing him. He swore he would keep his promise and I wonder how long Lian Yu can hold him. But my point is… I do understand what its like to suffer at Slade Wilson's hands. His torture of me was more psychological because at one time he was my best friend, my brother-in-arms, but it was no less painful than the torture he inflicted on you this past week. So, I am here as long as you need me to be."

"What about Star City? It needs Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow," Kara whispered.

"Oliver Queen is setting up a new shelter in National City and could be a bit of a busybody who needs to oversee the tiniest details," Oliver replied with a small smile, which faded as he came to his next point. "And Green Arrow fights corruption. It doesn't get more corrupt than a rogue government agency turned terrorist network. I think it's about time I send a clear message to Lillian Luthor that I am not what she thinks I am. I champion those who need aid, human or alien."

"You would do that for me?" Kara asked. "Take on Cadmus, risk your reputation?"

"You're worth it, Kara Danvers," Oliver told her. "Now, our friends told me that you're talking about hanging up the cape. That true?"

"Yeah," Kara said. "I-I dunno if I can go out there, knowing someone like Slade Wilson or Hank Henshaw could hit me with a Gold Kryptonite bullet or something like that. I'm… I'm scared, Oliver. For the first time since I put on the suit, I'm scared."

"Well, I won't try to talk you into continuing if it truly isn't what you want to do," Oliver said quietly. "The world will miss Supergirl, but I think it would miss Kara Danvers more. And I have a very important question for Kara Danvers."

"What?" Kara asked, curious despite herself.

"Will you run the day-to-day at my new National City shelter once it's up and running? I can't imagine a person more warm and welcoming than you, and that's precisely the kind of person I want to run the shelter since I can't be in two places at once."

"I'll think about it," Kara said, "but I don't see why I wouldn't. I-I might prefer it to working at CatCo to be honest. Same issue as with Supergirl. Now the paranoia is always going to be there whenever I follow up a lead."

Oliver began shrugging on his shirt and buttoning it up again. "I understand," he said quietly. "When I first got back from Lian Yu, I was always on alert. I even attacked my mother when she tried to wake me from a nightmare the first night home. Getting back into normal life after a traumatic experience is brutal, Kara. The best advice I can give is to lean on your human connections. It's the people around us, the people that we love and who love us, that give us the strength to get through times like this."

Kara looked down, blinking back tears as Oliver finished buttoning his shirt and pulled on his suit coat. "Does it ever get easier?" Kara asked quietly. "Living with the shame of what's been done to you? Does it get easier?"

Oliver closed his eyes and sat on the edge of the bed, placing one hand over the top of Kara's. "Shame comes from feeling as though we should've been stronger," Oliver said quietly. "Lillian used Kryptonite to attack you in your own apartment. She kept you in a cell lit by red solar emitters. She had you tortured in a similar room and topped it off by having you whipped with Gold Kryptonite. You, Kara Danvers, have nothing to be ashamed of. You faced your greatest weaknesses, and never once did you give Lillian what she wanted."

"That's not true," Kara whispered, tears again filling her eyes. "I may not have said it, but she knew; she looked in my eyes and she knew. I know, because you did the same. Didn't you?"

"What matters is you never vocalized it, you never gave her the satisfaction of giving in to her demands," Oliver replied. He cupped her chin with his hand and turned her blue eyes to face his. "My third year away from home, I was an indentured servant for Amanda Waller. Another man, Maseo Yamashiro, was my handler and Waller used threats against his family to keep me in line. There was a point where we got the chance to escape, and we all took it. Waller caught up to me and tortured me for hours. But in the end, she broke me by threatening to overdose my little sister on drugs since Speedy had developed a habit. I gave Waller the information she was looking for. I admitted she had won, and while it worked out in the end…" Oliver shrugged.

"Slade Wilson… Amanda Waller… Any other bad guys you worked for?"

"Uh, is Anatoli Knyasev a bad guy over here?" Oliver asked, honestly curious since he had never looked up the doppelgangers of people he had known as a way of keeping his old life and his new life separate.

"Uh, yeah, he fights frequently with the Batman, they call him the KGBeast," Kara said, shaking her head. "How did you turn out to be such a good person with those people being there for your formative years as a hero?"

"I wasn't a hero when I started out," Oliver replied. "I was a killer."

"Uh, no, you told me yourself you spared most of the people you went after and aimed for crippling shots, not killing ones, during that first year back," Kara said, her perfect Kryptonian memory coming in handy. "Finally, you did the same thing you've been doing in Star City. You were and are a hero, Oliver. Maybe not the same kind as me and my cousin, but if we were all the same, we wouldn't be individuals."

"Guess we'll find out if you still feel that way once I start in on Cadmus," Oliver said quietly. "Oh, and you may not remember this… but I promised Slade that I would take his eye and then his life for what he did to you. And like I said… one version of him was once my brother. We have some commonalities."

"I can't say I wouldn't be relieved if Deathstroke turns up dead somewhere," Kara admitted, which would've been a shock for anyone spying on their talk via the cameras. Supergirl admitting to wanting someone dead didn't really fit her golden girl image. Of course, anyone watching via the cameras was more than likely sympathetic to her thought process considering what she had gone through.

"I'll leave you to rest," Oliver said quietly. He squeezed her shoulder comfortingly one last time and left the medbay, turning and heading down the stairs to the balcony. He walked out onto it, breathing in the night air as he leaned on the railing. He felt more than saw Barry come up beside him. "I assume you were all watching," Oliver said quietly.

"Yeah, Winn pulled up the cameras," Barry said quietly. "I never knew all of that about you. I don't think Laurel or Ray did either." It went without saying that Caitlin had known nothing since she and Oliver had barely interacted during their little team-ups two years ago.

"Laurel knew some, but not everything," Oliver replied. "Ray knew none of it, though he might've guessed at some of it." Oliver turned to Barry. "Did you get me what I asked for?"

Barry produced a flash drive from his pocket and held it up for Oliver to take. "Everything the D.E.O. knows about Cadmus plus what we learned on Laurel's fishing expeditions," Barry said as Oliver took the drive. "We'll be heading back to Earth-1 soon now that Kara's back safe. What are you going to do with all of that?"

"Do what I do best," Oliver said grimly as he pocketed the flash drive. "Go to war."

A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter.