Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. Look at Arrow Season 8. Now Look at my fic. Back to Season 8. Now back to my fic. Do I look like I own Arrow?

Vigilantes' Dawn

By Kylia

Chapter 20: Can You Handle The Truth?

Ignorance, they say is bliss.

Of course, as anyone who has been endangered by not knowing the mess they're inadvertently in can tell you, that's only true after your ignorance has been stripped away. Ignorance may not be bliss, but the lack of ignorance can be so much worse.

The unfinished memoirs of Dinah Laurel Lance, the first Black Canary, don't say much about what she thought were Sara Lance's inner thoughts, upon finding out the truth she'd already been suspecting - that her sister was the Black Canary, that Oliver Queen was the Hood. That two of the people she was close to were criminals, vigilantes, that they stood, arguably, against everything the law and justice she'd dedicated herself to these last few years represented. Sara Lance didn't start keeping a journal until years later, and she never really addressed this question either.

It's impossible, then, to be sure how she reacted. Some information can be gleaned from other sources, or from stories told around the table at extended Queen and Lance family reunions, but of course those are of dubious accuracy, and dubious merit. Still, an important part of history is not just what happened - but how people remember what happened.

-Excerpt from "Age of Superheroes: The Dawn of the Vigilante," by Diana Queen, PhD Published by Starling City University Press, 2123.

The Foundry

March 8th, 2013

The bombardment of revelations - even abridged and glazed over as they no doubt were - her sister and Oliver gave Sara was staggering.

The island hadn't been deserted. Okay, that much she'd gathered from Oliver saying he'd been tortured there. But finding out those people been mercenaries, hired first by China to kill 'dangerous' prisoners and then hired by someone else to shoot down a passenger jet and threaten economic devastation as the resulting chaos destroyed stock markets the world over...

Well, it sounded too absurd to be real, but she couldn't doubt Oliver was telling the truth. A liar he could be, even a skilled one, but there was no lie, no hint of untruth here, no indication Oliver wasn't being anything but honest. There was more to say about the man named Slade, Sara could tell.

There was something... tinged about the way Oliver talked about Slade. The two men had grown close in their time together, but equally, something had happened to break them apart, she surmised. Even if, in the end, Slade died trying to aid their escape aboard the Amazo.

And of course...

The Amazo.

Laurel didn't say it in so many words - she didn't need to. She'd stayed alive because Dr. Ivo had found a use for her, and Laurel had had no choice but to accept it, to put up with it, to live with it.

It was a good thing Dr. Ivo was dead, because the murderous fury that ripped through her when Laurel implied what the bastard had done to her, what that monster had done to Sara's sister, what he'd put Laurel through...

She could tell how close Laurel was to cracking at the memories, at reliving them like this. Not breaking - Laurel was stronger than that, stronger than Sara wondered if she could be in the same situation - but still, cracking, her voice weakening a bit, Oliver holding closer, Laurel's expression closing off a little, eyes closing several times, blinking what might even have been the start of tears.

"You don't-" Sara had started, not wanting to force her to finish her story, not if she needed a moment, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw John Diggle look away, as if feeling like he was intruding on a private moment - which he was, in a way, though if he was part of this little vigilante gang Oliver and Laurel had, he deserved to know some things to.

"You don't need to-" Sara started again after taking a breath, but Laurel held up a hand.

"No. No, I do. God, I do. I need to tell you, Sara. I need you to understand what happened, why I did the things I did, why I've become who-"

"Laurel," Sara cut her sister off this time. "You didn't 'become' anything else. You're still the older sister I looked up to, always. You still believe in justice... even if you define it differently than you used to. God, Laurel, just look at what you've done for the Glades. Cops still don't go there alone, if they have a choice, but have you read the news? People are actually willing to go outside when they don't have to, some nights. In groups too, but still. Murders in the Glades are down by a third, muggings even more!"

Granted, some of that was just because the would be muggers were all still recovering from broken legs and broken arms, and all too many of them would return to old habits after they recovered, but still.

"Laurel," Sara murmured, taking her sister's hand in hers for a moment. "You've always wanted to help people, wanted to help the people that had no other options, that all too much of the system left behind. First you wanted to be a cop, and when Dad vetoed that, you went to be a lawyer. You wanted to be a DA, taking the cases no one else would, giving the victims voices."

"Wait, you actually paid attention, when I talked about that?" Laurel asked, almost smiling a little.

"Of course, Laurel," Sara smiled now, fondly remembering her half-exasperated air. God forbid her older sister ever find out that her younger sister actually paid attention, and looked up to and admired her. That had been how her teenage self had responded, anyway. "But it's not cool for younger sisters to idolize their older sisters." She chuckled ruefully.

"Idolize?"

"Well, maybe not that much. You still annoyed me a lot of the time too," Sara said, still smiling and poking her sister lightly in the shoulder. Then she inhaled, let it out. "But whatever else, you were still my big sister. You looked out for me at Balloi Prep, you helped me with my homework, you didn't rat me out to mom and dad when I came home late. Most of the time." She shook her head.

"I love you, Laurel. Losing you felt like hell. That's why I became a cop - your dedication to justice, I wanted to feel closer to you." And now, of course, her sister bent the rules of that justice into a pretzel. And yet, Laurel was still the same person to believed in justice.

She just believed in an older, more primal form of it.

"My point, Laurel," Sara went on, earnestly, "Is that you're still, ultimately, the same person you always were. You don't need to tell me everything that happened for me to believe that, for me to understand." She hugged Laurel tight before pulling back. "I want to know. I have questions I haven't even thought of, god knows. But there's nothing you have to tell me."

Laurel's eyes were definitely wet now, and she blinked back tears a moment. "Thanks, Sar-bear," she murmured, her voice sounding a little choked up, and then she nodded, taking a breath.

The story went on from there - again, so obviously breezing over a lot, but still, the essential high notes. Oliver getting drafted by a woman named Amanda Waller - the head of ARGUS. The very same agency that had crawled up Sara's ass about knowing Nyssa's name.

"She just... forced you to work for her? Or die?"

"And worse," Oliver nodded.

"The head of a United States Intelligence Agency just went and - fucking hell, now I get why people are scared of the NSA spying on them." Sara added that last bit in a mutter. Sara wasn't naive, but she'd always preferred to lean on the side of thinking the best of the government - most people working in it, she'd found, either had good intentions, or were just trying to do a difficult job the best they could, nothing malevolent in mind. Dirty cops, corrupt city officials - they existed, but even then, it wasn't usually so simple as 'bad person is bad just because'.

But this Waller woman... Oliver's brief descriptor of her, and of what had happened in Hong Kong made her out to be a monster. Maybe one doing something resembling good things for the country, maybe, but even then. Christ, is that where my tax dollars are going?

"For a woman like Waller, 'legal' doesn't really enter into it," Oliver commented. "It's not like I can sue her for violating..." he looked to Laurel, "what rights did she even violate?"

"Various 4th Amendment rights, to start with." Laurel shook her head. "We don't have long enough for me to enumerate every law and treaty she broken with what she pulled in Hong Kong."

"That bad?" Sara laughed hollowly. "Glad I decided to be stubborn and obstinate with that Agent Michaels when she demanded I tell her where I heard Nyssa's name." 'Glad' meaning the exact opposite of that.

"Michaels?" Diggle spoke up for the first time the conversation had begun. "Lyla Michaels?" There was an odd way he mentioned the name, with a mix of positive and negative feelings in the tone of voice he used.

Sara nodded, turning to him. "Yeah." She searched the expression on his face, though he was doing a pretty good job of keeping it neutral. "Ex girlfriend?"

"Ex wife." Diggle said, and Sara shook her head.

"Small world." Sara mused. Diggle seemed reticent to elaborate, and she didn't feel like pushing - hardly that important. She doubted ARGUS was likely to force the issue with her over that one bit of stubbornness, since she didn't know anything, but admittedly, her confidence was shaken a bit on that front by the revelations about what had happened in Hong Kong.

"So... while you were in Hong Kong, you were being drafted into this League."

"Nyssa found me - I was barely alive, floating on a piece of the ship..." she shook her head, a faraway look in her eye for a moment. "She found me, nursed me back to health... and told me that because she's saved my life, it was the League's now. And..." Laurel let out a long breath. "I didn't have any idea what I was agreeing to, but I didn't want to die, and... I didn't have anything else. So I said yes. I was taken to the League's fortress... brought before Ra's al Ghul. The Demon's Head."

"The Demon's Head?" Sara couldn't help but laugh. "Who calls themselves that?"

"Ra's al Ghul is no laughing matter, Sara," Laurel said with urgency. "He's a monster, and the most capable combatant I've ever met. He could defeat Oliver and me in a matter of minutes, with sword or bow, or any other weapon you could name. He's lived for hundreds of years, and has all that experience to draw on. He is ruthless, evil and utterly dedicated to his vision of the League."

"Hundreds of years?" Sara demanded. "Okay, no, no, that's bullshit. How the hell do you even know that? Everyone's probably lying. It's one of those Dread Pirate Robert's situations, in it it? Different guy behind the mask each time?" No. People didn't live hundreds of years. Santa wasn't real, that was just Dad in a suit with a beard. And there was no monster under the bed - but there were plenty of monsters out there in the streets of any major city in the United States. Or anywhere else in the world. Murderers, rapists, muggers, serial killers...

The world didn't need immortal monsters too. The world didn't have immortal monsters.

"The title is passed from each Ra's to the next, but the man that is Ra's now has held that title since the early 1800s," Laurel told her, sounding entirely genuine. "At least." She spoke with an almost fearful urgency, not quite whispering, but with a slight edge to her voice reminiscent of a hushed whisper.

"Laurel, that's impossible! How is he supposed to have been alive that long?" Sara scoffed, "What, is he like a Vampire or something? Did he make Horcruxes?" Laurel had caught up on the Harry Potter she'd missed while away, so Sara figured she'd know the reference. Oliver on the other hand, just sort of looked blankly at her.

"Horcruxes?"

"It's from Harry Potter," Laurel said, "evil way of extending your life with magic. And... Ra's al Ghul does have a way of extending his life with... well, all I can call it is magic." She shook her head a little, as if she still couldn't believe that. "The waters of the Lazarus Pit - they heal all injuries, and extend the life of those who bathe in it. It is the right of every Ra's al Ghul to use it and control its use."

Sara looked at Laurel, searching for any sign of a joke, even if this wasn't the time or place. She looked to Oliver, who seemed just as deadly serious, showing no sign he disagreed with her use of the word magic. Or about this... Lazarus Pit.

"Lazarus Pit..." Sara scoffed weakly, trying to dismiss it. This couldn't be real, right?

Laurel's hardly gullible. She'd have to have good reason to believe it...

"What, are you going to tell me it brings back to the dead, too?" She demanded, and then looked at Laurel - who just raised an eyebrow. "Wait, it does?"

"I never saw it do that, but supposedly, yes." Laurel nodded. "At great cost to the soul of the one so raised. But I have seen it cure injuries that should have killed people," she finished, voice quiet.

"I - I can't -" Sara shook her head, then closed her eyes and inhaled. "So... is it just the Lazarus Pit, or should I be worrying about magic and vampires and gremlins and-"

"Magic... or something like it exists," Oliver said, "I've seen it." Sara heard Diggle make a skeptical sound behind them, but it was quiet, the man still trying to avoid interrupting.

"It exists. But it's rare. And... well, I suppose I can't say for certain that vampires and gremlins or even unicorns don't exist, but even when Nyssa told me things about magic, about the ways the League counters it, she didn't tell me anything about those sorts of things." Laurel added, and Sara just stared at them.

"You're talking about magic as if... magic exists, apparently, and you're talking about it casually, like it's... just another one of your arrows?!" she demanded, looking at Oliver. "And while we're at it, you're masked vigilantes! I mean, there was that one guy in the Glades a few years ago, but those are supposed to be for comic books! And there's a thing called a Lazarus Pit that brings back the dead?!" Sara started laughing, unable to stop herself as the sheer, almost horrifying absurdity of her reality dawned on her.

"My life has become a fucking comic book, hasn't it?" She looked from Laurel to Oliver, then she closed her eyes and dropped her head, flushing in embarrassment and shame as she realized how trivialized she'd just made the things they'd gone through the last five years. "Sorry - I..." she shook her head. "This is serious, I know. I shouldn't..." she shook her head.

"So... he's dangerous. Powerful. And has a whole lot of assassins at his command." Sara summarized.

"He's a monster. As evil as the worst serial killers, if not more," Laurel said firmly. "And the way he treats Nyssa..." Sara watched her sister literally shake with supressed rage. She didn't have the words to express how she felt about this, clearly.

"So you were close with her?"

"Are close, still. I love her like another sister, Sara." Ay those words from Laurel, Sara felt a momentary surge of weird... jealousy? An almost instinctual reaction, as if somehow Laurel loving Nyssa like a sister somehow replaced her.

Which was so many different kinds of stupid.

"Nyssa spent her whole life in the League, and with Ra's as her father, she never had anything that could remotely be called a normal childhood." Laurel explained. "I'm the only friend she's ever had - because I didn't 'know better' than to try to become her friend while she trained me." She had that distant look on her face again for a moment. "Which is what made it even worse when Ra's sent her here to kill me."

Sara blinked. Cleared her throat. "Say that again? This... Nyssa came here to kill you?" And you're just getting to this now!? Sara managed to stop herself from actually asking that second question aloud though. It wasn't like there hadn't been a ton of other things that had had to be explained.

"Ra's Al Ghul sent her here to kill me, or return me to the League. There's only two ways out of the League - be released from your oath by Ra's Al Ghul-"

"Or death," Sara finished, the last two words beyond obvious. "And you wouldn't go back." Her words barely felt like her own voice, toneless and without inflection, but she felt... furious. If that bastard even tries...

She couldn't even articulate what she envisioned doing to this man if he tried to hurt her sister anymore than he and his League already had. Illegal and immoral, even if satisfying in a very biblical 'eye for an eye' sort of way, at the very least. Goddamnit Sara! One vigilante in the family is enough! She was a cop! She shouldn't be thinking like this - she got close with Vanch, and now this. She couldn't take justice into her own hands.

Well, who has the jurisdiction over this guy anyway? Who could stop him?

Not the point. Sara doubted she'd even be able to kill him, even if she was stupid enough to go on some mad suicidal crusade all by herself.

"Or death," Laurel nodded. "Returning would have killed me all the same. I... I didn't really have a plan, when I left the League." She looked to Oliver and took his hand in hers. "I realized Oliver was still alive, faked my death, and we returned to Lian Yu, to arrange our 'rescue'."

"But then you came back from the dead... twice over," Sara observed.

"I... I assumed that my return would be too public. Or something. I don't know." Laurel shook her head. "Nyssa didn't want to force the issue... but the League's all she knows. She's not happy that I left the League, left her, without even a goodbye either."

Well, losing a sister sucks. And if Laurel was Nyssa's only friend too... Sara couldn't even imagine how that would feel.

"But we got lucky." Oliver finally spoke again. "Laurel was able to strike a deal with Ra's Al Ghul. Get a stay of execution. Which is at the heart of everything." Sara watched Oliver pick up a small notebook, the size of her hand, and he handed it to her. Sara opened it, anc found page after page of names. Some names she recognized - major suspected criminals in the city, leading lights... and manys had been targeted by the Hood. Those ones were crossed off, even the ones who had gotten away from their meetings with the archer alive.

"What is this? Your hitlist?" She didn't know what to say about it, and Oliver killing people, even people who morally deserved it, was not something she'd accepted, like the rest. But she... she had to take it. Oliver and her sister were a package deal - she could hardly turn him in, or on him, without ultimately the doing the same with her sister. They'd been close before, but now they were basically one soul in two bodies, and all the other cliches.

Oliver and Laurel, always and forever. Her childish crush of years ago was long gone, but it was even more obvious now how stupid it had been.

"Not exactly. But close," Oliver answered. "Remember the Dark Archer, from Christmas?"

"The copycat? Yeah."

"He's former League," Laurel explained quietly. "Gone freelance. He works for the man who wrote that list. A list of some of the wealthiest and most connected criminals in Starling City. The people who could hide their crimes, or at least their guilt. Nyssa arrived right after we fight the Dark Archer."

Christmas.

"Oliver's accident." Sara said softly, wondering how she hadn't made that connection before, even when suspecting Oliver was the Hood.

"I froze at the wrong moment, afraid the League had sent him. Or something." Laurel said, voice full of guilt.

"Laurel," Oliver started, but Laurel held up her hand.

"Oliver, no. I froze, and you nearly died. I'm not beating myself up over it anymore, but it is the truth." She looked to him. "You're already blaming yourself for so many other things that aren't your fault. Don't blame yourself for this." Now Sara felt like she was intruding on a private moment between these two, and she just waited while the two met each other's eyes for a few seconds, then they looked away.

"But yes. That's what really happened that night. The Dark Archer got away. But since he's gone freelance, he's violated the ideals of the League - I still fight evil men. He serves them." Laurel explained.

"And that's the deal you made - bring the Dark Archer to justice, you get to stay free?" Sara asked. "Well, I say 'justice' but..." she trailed off.

"We have to kill him," Laurel confirmed. "If it comes to it, I will -" her breath caught, then she let out a long exhale. "I will." she repeated.

"Only if you have to." Oliver told her. "I can make the final blow."

"Well, to worry about that, we need to draw him out, and we haven't been able to do that again yet," Laurel pointed out. "And we're running out of time."

"How much time do you have left?" Sara asked. She forced all the other questions she had, all the other things she had to process aside. Sara knew she was going to have some sort of mental breakdown when she got back home after this, but right now, she had to stay on topic. Her sister had a death sentence hanging over her, and Sara would do what she could to help.

"Three months." Oliver answered. "Or to find out who wrote the list and get the Dark Archer that way."

"Which begs the question - how do you have it? What is it?" Sara looked over at Oliver.

"My father had it on his body, when I buried him." Oliver said softly. He'd already explained that Robert Queen had made it to the life raft in reality, unlike the version of events he'd told the court when he was brought back from the dead. But that his father had shot himself, to give Oliver the best chance to survive. "I thought it was his list - his last words were asking me to make up for his mistakes, the ways he failed this city... but..." he trailed off, cleared his throat.

"The Dark Archer told us the man who wrote the list wanted the Hood dead." Oliver finished.

"And your father had a copy."

"And my mother," Oliver said gravely. And then he explained recent events - Walter Steele had apparently found a copy of the list at Queen Mansion, shortly before disappearing, given it to one of the employees at Queen Consolidated, named Felicity, to look into. How his mother had thrown the list into the fire...

And how the Queen's Gambit was sabotaged. Presumably by the man behind the List. For the first time, Sara could really see how close to the edge Oliver was now, with the recent revelations.

"Not an accident?" Sara shook her head in wonder. "God..." A horrible thought came to her mind. "Do you think your mother-?"

"I don't know what to think," Oliver admitted. "There's only one way to find out."

"Wait, you're really going to talk to her as the Hood?" Diggle asked.

"How else can I be sure I'm going to get the truth?" Oliver pointed out. "We don't have time - if we don't kill the Dark Archer in three months, the League will come back."

"Nyssa might still be able to return with more information about the identity of the Dark Archer, or at least help us narrow it down more. She saw him."

"Decades ago. And that's even if Ra's lets her come back to help us. He knows who the man is, and won't tell us. It's a game to him." Oliver chot back to Laurel.

Even more reason to hate the bastard. From what little she was being told about 'The Demon's Head', it seemed like the man got off on making people suffer, on making people dance to his tune just because he could.

"You don't have to be the one to -" Laurel started, trying to help, but Oliver shook his head.

"No. It has to be me - the Black Canary doesn't kill people, and she doesn't go after the one percenters. That's the Hood. The threat has to feel genuine." Oliver pointed out, and Laurel's expression fell, as she realized he was right.

"When?" Diggle asked Oliver.

"Tomorrow night." He answered.

"I'm going to be there," Laurel said firmly, not brooking debate. "If you need backup." Oliver nodded.

"Whatever you find out, you should tell me." Sara pointed out. The others turned back to her, and Sara chuckled hollowly, "You forget - I'm a detective. Unless your mother tells you everything tomorrow night, you're going to need someone to help put the pieces together. I'd start now, but right now, my head feels like it's going to blow up if I try to think any more."

"You're taking this better than I was worried you might," Laurel admitted.

"Ask me again in a few days." Sara admitted. "I don't think it's all really registering. But whatever else - you can be sure I'm not going to turn you in, if you were ever worried about that. Or tell Dad."

"I can't imagine what his reaction to this would be."

"Worse," Sara said with certainty. "He wouldn't turn you in either, but it would eat him up even more." Her father held to 'the book' more than she did. Sara understood why the rules existed, the limits on what cops could do, but she chafed at them a lot more than her father ever had, and certainly more than he did now.

Sara took a deep breath. "I need to go home. Think about this." She laughed, "You know where to find me. And you both have my number."

"Sara-" Laurel started, then she trailed off, as if not sure what else to say.

"Laurel. Please. Whatever else, that you're my sister and I love you - that won't ever change," Sara said, tone urgent. She needed to make sure Laurel understood that - needed Laurel to get that that really wasn't going to change. "I need you to understand that." She pulled her sister in for one last hug, squeezing her tight for a long moment before pulling back.

"Love you too," Laurel said, eyes damp again.

Sara pulled back. "Goodnight," She told them both, then nodded to Diggle before she left.

Sara Lance's Apartment

March 8th, 2013

What am I supposed to think?

Her sister was a murderer - forced into some weird assassin cult, with a death sentence over her head. Her sister, the girl who had been so dedicated to justice, to helping people. The whole reason Sara had become a cop was because she wanted to honor Laurel's memory. And to be closer to her dad, once the divorce happened and he ran into his job as a way to stay out of the bottle.

At least she wasn't killing anymore.

But Oliver was.

Oliver. Oliver Jonas Queen, party-boy dilettante extraordinaire. The guy who got arrested for peeing on a cop for God's sake!

He was a murderer. The Hood was a killer - not an assassin, no. He gave people a chance - he gave people back the money stolen from them, he didn't kill if he didn't have to, but he killed.

They were vigilantes - without oversight, without limits, rules, restrictions. It was seductive, in it's appeal. So many people had gotten away with crimes, people Sara had investigated, because they had the right connections, because they could hide the evidence too well, scare or kill the witnesses, hire the best lawyers. Sara could think of a dozen men she'd like to put in the Hood's bow-sights, or at least have the Black Canary put in the hospital.

But there was a reason the rules were there. Imperfect though they could be, especially in certain kinds of cases, as imperfect as the police were, as imperfect as the criminal justice system was, it was a process. A system. It had checks, it had the possibility for self-correction. There was a reason death row took so damn long. There was a reason the burden of evidence was 'beyond all reasonable doubt', in criminal trials.

She knew Laurel. She knew Oliver. Whatever else had changed, whatever they'd been through, the two of them were still good people. Even if they seemed to doubt that about themselves.

But even with good intentions, you could make mistakes. Sara had arrested the wrong person once, and believed strongly that others were guilty, but have been held back because she didn't have actionable evidence. And it had turned out that she'd been wrong. Because there were limits.

But there are no limits on them. No restrictions. And if either Oliver or Laurel were ever wrong... at a minimum they were hospitalizing innocent people. At worst...

But the cops could be wrong. Even people who went through the prolonged process of death row, even people who were executed, could be found innocent. Laurel and Oliver had saved Peter Declan's life.

Sara sat down on her couch, trying to meditate, or at least make the effort. She'd taken a yoga class once, back while she'd been in college, and she tried to think back on that, tried to calm her thoughts, clear her mind.

It failed, and it was all she could do to stop herself from hyperventilating.

Her sister was a killer. Her sister's boyfriend, was a killer.

And they were asking her to be okay with it.

But she had no other choice, did she? She wouldn't turn them in. Couldn't. Not unless they... went crazy. Started killing innocent people, knowingly, or... in large numbers, or... something. But she couldn't imagine either one of them doing that.

I could just... pretend they didn't tell me? Right?

She didn't have to help them. She didn't have to let them tell her what they were doing. Make her more complicit than she already was. Because she was. Complicit in everything they'd done, now. As a cop, she was supposed to arrest people who broke the law, she was supposed to turn people in. If the oath she'd taken when she became a cop meant anything to her, she should be turning them in.

And if she didn't turn them in, did she have any right to just... pretend it wasn't happening? Pretend she didn't know? Did she really have the right to salve her conscience, if she even could, by just... not being involved?

Didn't she have an obligation to be part of the process? Help them make sure they didn't go after innocent people? Didn't she have a responsibility to be involved?

Besides, could she really stand by and do nothing while her sister had a death sentence hanging over her head?

And it was that last fact that really, as she sat there, eliminated any other options, even as they kept spinning around in her brain. She wouldn't lose Laurel again - not so soon after she'd come back from the dead. She couldn't let that happen to her father either. Or her mother, absentee though she was.

Sara's head throbbed, and she pressed her hands to her temples, rubbing, as if that would do anything.

She had no answers, and yet, there was only one acceptable answer.

She had to help them. She had to help Laurel, help Oliver. Help them find this Dark Archer, help them fight crime. Help them only take down people who were guilty. Help them find the guilty people.

But she was still a cop. She had to stay a cop. She wasn't a vigilante. She wasn't going to become a vigilante. And if she could, she would try to be a limiter on Oliver, on Laurel. Somehow.

Hopefully, that would let her be able to sleep at night.

Someday, anyway.

Tonight, though, Sara knew she wasn't going to be able to get any sleep. Kicking off her shoes, she went into the kitchen, pulling out a beer and starting up a fresh pot of coffee. Sleep wasn't going to be able to come, so she didn't even need to bother trying.

Popping the cap off her beer and tossing it on the counter, she sipped from the bottle, walking to her bedroom closet and opening the door, her collection of photos, printouts and newspaper clippings inside. All the 'clues' she'd assembled when trying to convince herself that she wasn't crazy.

She stared at them, at how much they missed the full reality of what she'd just found out, and how absurdly thin the evidence really was, and yet how right she'd still been. Little clues, little scraps of information, scribbled notes asking obvious questions she had the answers to now.

With a single half-strangled scream of frustration, Sara started ripping everything off the inside of the door, letting them scatter across the floor.

She didn't need them anymore.

She was crazy.

Queen Consolidated Building, Starling City

March 9th, 2013

"Are you sure you want to do this, Oliver?" Laurel's voice over the comms asked, one last time as he readied himself on the roof, eyes on the target. His mother was in her office, having some sort of last meeting for the evening, exactly as he'd expected she would be. She'd said she'd be home late because of a meeting. At least she'd been telling the truth about this.

"I don't 'want' to, but I have to, Laurel," Oliver pointed out. "I need to know. My mother's involved, we know that - how and why, we don't know."

"And will you like what you learn? We have other ways to find the Dark Archer. We have time-"

"I don't like what I've learned already," Oliver countered, and Laurel made a small noise of agreement.

"Fair enough. If you need me-"

"I'll call for your help. But I'm not going to be fighting QC security." Hopefully he'd have his answers before they got there, and either way, he wasn't going to seriously injure the people who were responsible for keeping his mother safe when she was at work.

"Good luck," Laurel said quietly, and Oliver fired the arrow, watching it embed right above the window into his mother's office. And then -

He zipped across the distance quickly, crashing through the window feet first, landing with ease, his face covered with one arm to stop any glass. The guards were right where they always were - with three well placed punches, he took the two of them down, the first with one, the other with two, since he had a moment to prepare. The two men his mother had been meeting with immediately had tried to run for cover, while his mother stood there, behind her desk, watching, horror and fear and resolve written across her face.

He fired an arrow into the lap on his desk, trying to ignore the gasp of terror that escaped his mother as she tried to back away, hands held up. Just cooperate Mom. I don't want to have to scare you more than I need to...

"Moira Queen!" He barked, the voice modulator distorting his voice, bringing it down even lower than he was, but still intelligible. "You have failed this city!" She tried to reach for the phone, but Oliver fired again, the arrow landing almost into her hand, embedding in the desk next to the phone. He hadn't let himself second guess, and the shot had worked. But he couldn't take chances like that, even as good as he was...

"Stand still!" He ordered, her small sounds of terror as she stopped moving more than he wished he had to deal with...

"Please don't kill me!" She begged. Oliver stepped closer.

"Do you know anything about your husband's disappearance?" he asked first. Walter Steele had been looking into this, into her, and he vanished. The first place to start.

"What?!"

"Is Walter Steele still alive!?" He demanded.

"I don't know where my husband is! I swear." She answered, fear in her voice unmistakable, and she seemed to be telling the truth. If she knew he was dead... if she had him killed because he knew too much...

Which could mean he had been taken, as leverage against her. The other man in the recording, the one behind all this. Which meant his mother could just be a forced pawn.

It was better than the alternative.

"What is the Undertaking?" Oliver demanded. Instead of answering, his mother moved, grabbing something off the table behind her desk. "I said don't move!"

"I- I'm a mother!" she pleaded, dropping to one knee, then kneeling outright, holding the picture of himself and Thea before her. Oliver's breath caught. "I have a son, Oliver. A daughter," her voice broke, "her name is Thea. She's just a teenager. Please don't take me from my children." She begged.

Oliver had had people plead. People with children. But none had pleaded on behalf of their kids before. Always for their own lives, for themselves.

She's not in this for herself, for anything but keeping us safe. Oliver was sure of that. He couldn't be anything else - he knew his mother, and he knew this, this had to be real. Her life possibly about to end, and her first thought was for Thea, and him.

"They lost their father. They can't lose me too. Please... whoever you are, please."

"Okay." Oliver's resolve didn't break, but it did lessen. He couldn't put his mother through this. Not if he could get his answers with a little less intimidation. He lowered his bow, slowly.

"I'm not gonna hurt you." True, and he could always pretend it wasn't if he had to go back to threatening her. But if he promised her children would be safe, then maybe she'd... maybe she'd tell the truth, if she thought the Hood could stop whoever was behind this from hurting her children.

Instead of saying anything, his mother dropped the picture, grabbed a gun from behind her and started firing. She got a flower face, inner windows of her office, and him.

The bullet sliced across his neck and Oliver pressed his hand to it, the blood soaking through the fabric of his suit and his fingers. He didn't have long to stay conscious. He heard his mother grab talking, probably calling security, but he didn't bother to make out the words. He had to move, quickly.

"Oliver, Oliver, talk to me!" Laurel demanded over the comms. "Damnit, I'm on my way!"

"No," Oliver muttered as he quickly got to his feet and made for the window. Taking his hand off his injury, he fired at the parking garage, a lower level. "Parking garage, ground floor." He managed to get out, grabbing onto the line with one hand, and pressing onto his wound again as he swung across the distance, landing inside the parking garage, dropping and rolling without grace.

"Call John, tell him to get ready..." Oliver said weakly as he got to his feet. "Tell him to get ready for surgery."

"I'm on my way," Laurel replied. He heard the sound of glass breaking - Laurel was hotwiring a car to get them back to the Foundary in time. Only way to move fast enough... Oliver dropped to his knees just above the stairs down to the ground floor of the parking garage, but he had to keep going. Just a little longer.

Just a little further.

His head was light, his vision blurring as a red station wagon stopped in front of him. Laurel was there, helping him into the back seat.

"I just hope whoever's car this is can get blood out of the seats when we're done with it," Laurel muttered as she laid him out and got back behind the wheel, pressing the wires again to start it back up. Oliver, only barely registered either of those things as he kept holding his hand to the injury.

"Just hold on Oliver..." Laurel's voice echoed in his ear as he slipped in and out of consciousness.