"The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies... It comes from friends and loved ones." -Ash Sweeney

Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. Thanks for all of the reviews, etc. Read, enjoy and review.

Wear masks and stay safe!

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Saddest Thing (About Betrayal)

Felicity had set Sara up in her 'safehouse' in the Glades. It was a small stationary mobile home that had been purchased under a false name using money from one of her offshore accounts shortly after Felicity's return from Lian Yu. There was a small bedroom containing a bunkbed and a drawer with spare clothes, and the spare bedroom had been set up with a state-of-the-art computer system. The kitchen had some plastic cutlery and paper plates, and Felicity had loaned her old friend some money to buy supplies. There was a fully stocked, army grade medical kit in the bathroom, and spare weapons were stashed all over the place, both hidden and not.

All-in-all, it was everything Sara could ask for in a safehouse. After her release from hospital, Sin joined her. The younger girl had become close to Thea Queen and her Glades' boyfriend (and hadn't that been a shock? The Queens' darling Princess not only knew someone from the Glades, but was dating him. You die for six years and the whole world goes mad). But because Sara was still hiding from her family, she had insisted that Sin keep the couple away from their new place, so her younger roommate was away from their shared home for most of the day.

Home. What a difficult word. Home wasn't this small trailer where she and Sin shared a tiny bedroom and ate pre-made dinners.

Home was her parents, arguing playfully in the kitchen of her childhood house as Quentin cooked dinner and her mom graded papers. Home was Felicity painting her nails as they chatted, or even Laurel taking full advantage of the 'older' part of 'older sister' to boss her around.

Home was lying in bed in Nanda Parbat, entwined with Nyssa's strong form.

Sara twisted the bracelet her former lover had made and given to her right before she had left around her wrist, fingers gently tracing the symbols of love, devotion and remembrance that were carved into the dark wood. Her heart ached with longing and wistfulness.

They had both known from the start that it wasn't going to last. Sara had hated everything about the League save for Nyssa herself, and had missed her family the same way an amputee would miss a limb. She had never allowed the thought of her staying to float, mentioning her plans for departure once her debt was repaid whenever someone broached the subject. And Nyssa was Heir to Ra's al-Ghul. She would never abandon her people. Ra's would never allow her to. Sara was different, an outsider who was very skilled, but not irreplaceable. She could be released, had to be released according to the agreement made between herself and the League on her induction, least the Demon's Head be accused of breaking his word. Her and Nyssa's situations were completely different.

But oh, Sara had loved that woman. She fought back the tears that wanted to fall, wincing away from the memory of Al-Owal slapping her in training when she collapsed from exhaustion. 'Tears are weakness!' His voice hissed in her mind. Sara Noelle Lance, Ta-er al-Sahfer was not weak. She had survived a shipwreck, over a year on the Amazo, months on that godforsaken island, and years in the League of Assassins. She was not weak, and she would not create the impression of weakness by giving into the urge to weep over her losses and pain.

What sin had she committed in her last life? Sara mused to herself, for the trillionth time. That she was cursed to so much suffering in this one?

The sound of the front door opening broke her from her bitter thoughts, and she grabbed the knife in her sleeve on instinct, bracing herself.

"Hey, anybody home?" Felicity called, her voice making the ex-assassin relax a fraction. "Sara?"

Sara sighed and hid her knife again, trotting into the other room to see her best friend placing some takeaway bags on the kitchen counter.

Felicity smiled at her warmly, though Sara could see the same worn-out bitterness in her friend's eyes as she did in the mirror. Like her, Felicity had died when the Gambit had gone down. She had been hardened and tormented by the world, and it had changed her. Damaged her. The Felicity Queen née Smoak who had returned to Starling City was not the one who had left it.

If only they had never set foot on that godforsaken boat.

"Hey," Sara greeted her friend.

"Breakfast?" Felicity offered. "I got breakfast burritos for us from Jitters."

Sara smiled softly. "Sounds good," she agreed, joining the other blonde at the small countertop, perching on a stool and nibbling away at the burrito. It was delicious, full of greasy goodness, and they ate in silence. Sara suspected she knew the source of the resolve in Felicity's bright blue eyes, but she didn't want to be the first one to acknowledge the topic. She focused on her food instead, savouring the mixture of flavours that burst on her tongue. She had travelled the world, but no place did a breakfast burrito quite the way Jitters did.

Nyssa had been a mixture of horrified and transfixed by Sara's love of greasy food. The League only served high quality Asian and Middle Eastern food, food that was specifically chosen to improve energy and keep you fit and lean. It was yet another of the many things that Sara, an unrepentant fast food junkie, had hated about the place. Every chance she got, she would stop at a fast food place and scarf down a MacDonald's burger or whatever else she could get her hands on.

It reminded her of days when her dad, who shared her addiction, who take her out making her promise to keep it a secret from Mom, who was like Laurel and preferred healthy shit like tofu and stuff like that.

Sara swallowed and shoved away thoughts of Nyssa. Her beloved belonged in the past.

'Your past holds you back', one of her trainers had told her once. 'It makes you weak, and weakness is not to be tolerated. You must let it die. Kill it if you have to, but either way, you must figure out how to escape it, or it will be your downfall.'

She had never quite managed to let go of her past, however. She had counted down the missions and days until Ra's agreed that she could be released from service. But she had always known that she would one day return to Starling and those she loved. She was never going to reunite with Nyssa, so she had to let her, and her memory, go.

"Sara," Felicity began once their burritos were finished. "We need to talk."

Sara grimaced. It seemed her guess was right, and her grace period was at last up. "What about?" She asked, blatantly procrastinating. Felicity gave her a stern look.

"You've been home for at least three months now, Sara," the archer sighed, propping her chin on her fist. "And I've known you're here and alive for a week. I can't look Quentin in the eye and keep this from him, and I can't keep putting him off about why I'm avoiding him either. If you don't go and tell him you're back, I'll drag you there myself."

Sara scoffed haughtily. "You couldn't beat me," she declared, confident in her skills. She had not been the best fighter in the League, but she had definitely stood out, especially given her late arrival to the organization.

Felicity arched an eyebrow at that. "Is that so?" She hummed, a glint in her eyes.

Sara suddenly doubted her own conviction that she would win against her friend. After all, Malcolm Merlyn, Al-Saher, had been renowned for his skills as a fighter even among the elite warriors that made up the League, yet Felicity had beaten him.

"Alright, I have an idea," Felicity declared, clapping her hands together. "The two of us'll spar. If I win, you go and speak to Quentin today. If you win, I'll let it go for the rest of the month."

Sara considered, drumming her fingers nervously on the countertop. She was torn. She had missed her family desperately, even Laurel, whom she had argued with more than they had actually talked normally with one another. For the past half-a-dozen years, the thought of coming home and being held in her father's strong embrace, feeling her mother's hands carding through her hair again, it had been the one anchor to sanity that she had. Nyssa, much as she loved her, had sometimes made things worse. Nyssa believed, wholly and fully, in the actions and goals of the League, but all Sara ever felt was sick with self-hatred and disgust at the blood that stained her hands and her soul.

But at the same time, she dreaded having to tell them the truth of what had happened to her over the past six years. How could she tell her parents that she had aided Ivo in torturing a dozen people, several of them to death? How could she confess to becoming an assassin? She still had nightmares, over a year later, of when she had slit the throat of a single father in his sleep and then left his body in his bed to be discovered by his children the next day.

They would, justifiably, be horrified and repelled by her. It was easy to say that if given the choice being doing such reprehensible things and death, you would choose death, but Sara had been too much of a coward to do so. She couldn't bear to see the loving gazes of her parents turn to disgust and horror when they realized what she had done.

"Sara?" Felicity's voice broke through her thoughts, and she realized that she must have been lost in thought for God knew how long. Well, if he had actually existed, God would probably have known, but Sara had lost any sense of faith she had years ago aboard the Amazo. If there really was some deity up there, he sure as hell didn't give a fuck about anyone on Earth.

She shook the thought away, realizing that Felicity was eyeing her with a concerned gaze, her white teeth sinking into her painted bottom lip and worrying it.

"I'm alright," Sara promised, knowing she was lying as she spoke. "Fine. Rules for the spar?"

Felicity studied her a moment longer before inclining her head in silent, if dubious, acceptance of her words. "Hand-to-hand," she stated. "First to be pinned for one minute or else to surrender loses. Avoid any broken bones or injuries to areas that can't be covered by clothes. We don't need any awkward questions, believe me. Coming up with believable excuses is a headache and a half. Especially when it comes to your dad."

Sara nodded. "Where are we doing this, then?" She asked, sliding off her stool.

"My base," Felicity replied instantly, not blinking an eyelash. "It has more than enough room."

Two and a half hours later, Sara hit the ground of the underground basement Felicity had repurposed into her headquarters. She landed flat on her stomach, letting out an instinctive groan as the wind was knocked out of her harshly. Felicity swiftly took advantage of the opening, pinning Sara's torso to the mats with her knee while holding her tightly in place by her wrists.

"Do you yield?" The vigilante of Starling City demanded sharply.

The Canary sighed and bowed her head.

"I yield," she agreed softly.

It was settled. Sara would be reunited with her family tonight.

To: Dinah:

Di, it's Quentin. We need to talk about Laurel. Can you come over tonight, please? It's urgent.

To: Quentin:

I'll be there at 6.

Felicity stared at the screens. She had hacked into Quentin's phone to send the message. Silently, she hoped that Laurel herself wouldn't be there. With the woman's erraticness lately, she had a feeling her presence wouldn't be a good idea.

"Is it done then?" Sara asked, tone terse.

"It's done," Felicity confirmed. She spun her chair around to look at her friend. The other vigilante was currently using her staff to beat the stuffing out of a training dummy. (Literally. The tip had gone through the fabric and sand was now falling out of the hole stiltedly.)

"Right," Sara mumbled. Her next hits weren't as steady or on target, hampered by the tension lining her spine that ruined her stance.

"Sara, I know this is hard for you," Felicity murmured sympathetically. "I know better than anybody else that, after everything, coming home is hard. But you need to do it."

"You don't know what I've done," Sara replied without looking back at her.

"And you don't know what I've done either," Felicity countered, mind instinctively shying away from her memories of ARGUS and the Bratva. "But you won't be free until you come home. Really come home, not just back to Starling to hover in the shadows for the rest of your life."

"It's not about freedom," Sara argued, turning back to her at last, face pale and strained. "It's about forgiveness. There are somethings in life that just- they can't be forgiven."

Felicity's expression softened in sympathetic understanding. "I get that," she told her friend earnestly, standing and walking over to stand beside her. "I really do, Sara." Sara met her gaze, both of them with shoulders slumped from the weight of the sins they had committed in the name of survival.

"But that's the thing about forgiveness, Sara," Felicity went on, reaching out to rest a hand on her surrogate sister's shoulder. "You can't get it until you ask for it."

"Are you saying if I asked you, you would forgive just like that?" Sara asked with a snap of her fingers. "Never mind what I did? Even if I didn't tell you what happened?"

"I would," Felicity acknowledged steadily. "But there's no point in asking me for it."

"Why not?" Sara huffed.

Felicity gave a sad smile. "Because I'm not the one you need forgiveness from," she informed her gently. Just as Felicity had unconsciously needed forgiveness from Oliver and William for leaving them to become a killer, albeit against her will, Sara needed to be forgiven by her family for everything she had done before she too could begin the walking down the long road to healing from her trauma.

As it turned out, therapy was useful after all, despite how wary she and Oliver had both been when they first started it.

"Di?" Quentin blinked in surprise at the sight of his ex-wife standing on his porch. "What're you doing here?"

She frowned. "You texted me, remember?" Dinah reminded him. "You said that we needed to talk about Laurel, that it was important."

Quentin frowned deeper, removing his phone and looking through his history, surprised to see she was right. "I don't remember-" he began. Just then, Felicity's Mini Cooper rolled up.

"Felicity!" He grinned when she climbed out, relieved to see her for the first time in over a week. She'd been avoiding his calls too, under the excuse of being busy with some project. He had been debating whether or not to go and check in on her. Only Oliver's assurance that she was alright had stayed him so far, but if she had continued to avoid him, he knew he would have given into his instincts and gone to see her.

"Hi, Quentin," she smiled softly at him before turning to Dinah. "Hi, Dinah."

"Hello Felicity," she nodded in response.

"I, uh, I was the one to arrange this," Felicity admitted, at the same moment as Quentin spied a figure sitting in the passenger seat. The person's features were obscured by the dark of the night, but Quentin saw enough to get a sense of familiarity from them.

"Why?" Dinah questioned her in a wary tone.

Felicity swallowed, turning to the car. "C'mon," she urged the person. "Please."

A sense of nervous anticipation filled the detective, as if his body already understood what his mind did not. His heart pounded in his ears as the passenger door opened and a small young blonde woman climbed out.

He heard a strangled cry and recognized it as his own voice. His knees buckled and he grabbed the side of the doorframe to keep from falling to all fours. In the background, he heard Dinah start to sob.

"Sara?" He croaked, staring at her. His baby girl was in front of him, blue eyes glazed with tears. "Baby girl? No, it can't be. It can't be Sara. Sara's dead."

"It's me," she insisted, stepping closer hesitantly. "It's really me, Daddy, Mom. I'm alive, I'm home."

Dinah let out a strangled cry and surged forward. Sara tensed slightly, but all her mother did was tug her into the tightest embrace possible, as if she could somehow merge their bodies and keep her child from ever leaving her arms again.

Quentin, still in shock, turned to Felicity, who was biting her bottom lip and watching them all worriedly. "Did you know?" He asked her hoarsely.

She shook her head, eyes wide and sincere. "No, no I didn't," she insisted. "I swear to God, I thought she was dead. If I had known earlier she was still alive, I'd've searched the whole world for her. I only found out last week, but she, she wasn't ready yet. I'm so sorry, I swear I didn't know."

Quentin nodded. His vision was blurry and his cheeks were damp from the tears spilling from his eyes and streaming freely down his cheeks. He paused long enough to hug his unofficially adoptive daughter and kiss her forehead before staggering over to the others. Sara pulled away from Dinah, who kept a grip on her, no doubt as terrified as Quentin that if she let go, she would wake up and discover that the miracle was a dream after all. He hesitantly reached out to touch his daughter's arm. She gave him a tremulous smile. In her sky-blue eyes, he saw shadows made from sorrow and pain, and his heart clenched as he wondered what traumas she had gone through in the years she was away for.

"My beautiful baby girl," he breathed, before pulling her and Dinah both into a tight embrace, reaching out to tug Felicity in as well.

"Thank you God," he breathed. Both of his daughters, whom he had thought dead, had survived and returned home to him and their family. It really was a miracle, one he would never, could never, take for granted.

Island in the North China Sea: 2009

"ما اسمك؟?"

The voice broke through Sara's hazy, pain-blurred mind. It was a woman's voice, accented from someplace she didn't recognize, and brisk.

Sara groaned and cracked open her eyes. It felt as if there were anchors attached to her eyelashes, weighing them down and keeping them closed. She managed to force them open, and after a moment her vision corrected itself, allowing her to take in the figure kneeling beside her in the sand.

Was she still on Lian Yu, or had she drifted to another of the hundreds of islands that dotted this godforsaken sea?

"ما اسمك؟?" The woman repeated.

She had long, dark hair with corkscrew curls, and olive skin. Her features were regal in a way that made Sara think of medieval nobility in TV shows, and her brown eyes were narrow as she studied Sara. She was dressed in a strange red and black get-up, with a quiver and bow strung across her back. Unlike the arrows Felicity carved and used, those projectiles were definitely not made of wood, but rather of metal. A knife was sheathed at her hip, and something about the way she held herself made Sara certain that the other woman was deadly with not just those weapons, but her bare hands as well. She almost made Sara think of a panther, or some other wildcat, deadly, graceful, and utterly entrancing to watch.

Beautiful.

"I don't understand," Sara croaked out. "I don't know what you're saying."

The woman frowned before replying in English. "What is your name?"

Sara swallowed, her throat dry and sore, before answering. "Sara. Sara Lance."

"I am Nyssa al-Ghul, Heir to the Demon," the woman replied proudly. Sara swallowed again, this time in fear. She didn't know what the title meant, but it didn't sound good.

"Where am I?" Sara asked timidly.

"You are on Zhengjiu, an island in the North China Sea," Nyssa replied. "I found you here, unconscious in the sand. You seem to have drifted here. How?"

Sara shrugged, letting out a hiss of pain at the movement. "The freighter, it blew up," she explained weakly. "My friend-is she here? She has blo-brunette hair and blue eyes, about my age, very tanned and thin. Her name is Felicity." Well, her hair was brunette now. Felicity grumbled about it on occasion, but survival was their priority, not looks.

Nyssa shook her head. "I am afraid not," she answered, a hint of sympathy in her voice and eyes. Or maybe Sara was imagining it, projecting kindness out of desperation not be stuck with another Ivo. "I found only you." She fell silent a moment, eyeing Sara thoughtfully for a few moments, before giving a curt nod. She adjusted her tunic, then reached out and plucked Sara up as easily as Sara herself would lift a baby, holding her to her chest.

"Where are you taking me?" Sara asked nervously, automatically wrapping her arms around Nyssa's neck to keep from falling. The last time a stranger had 'helped' her, it was Ivo. After everything trusting him had led to, Sara doubted she would ever properly trust anyone again.

"To my safehouse," Nyssa informed her calmly. "I will tend to you there. You are soaked to the skin, malnourished and dehydrated, not to mention wounded. I cannot tend you here on the beach."

"Why?" Sara whispered. "What do you want from me?"

She felt Nyssa shrug. "We will see how you can repay me when you are recovered," she answered. "To have survived and explosion and floating all this way, you must be strong indeed. Such potential should not be wasted."

Sara wasn't reassured by the other woman's words, but she didn't dare to protest. She knew instinctively that she wouldn't be able to protect herself from Nyssa even if she were healed, and exhaustion was already pulling her back under.

She could only hope that it wasn't another Ivo situation. If she'd still believed in God, she would've prayed to him for salvation, but she didn't, so she could only for the best and prepare herself for the worst.

Laurel was blazing with rage as she stormed into Sebastian's office.

Sara was alive. Her younger sister was alive. She had clearly not been stuck on island for the past couple of years the way Felicity had been, meaning the selfish bitch had simply decided to spend six years wandering around doing God-only-knew-what, uncaring of their family's heartache and grief over her supposed death. And now, after six years of being away, Sara had the goddamn nerve to come casually flouncing back into their lives as if she hadn't abandoned them.

Where the fuck had Sara been when their mom packed her things into her car and left, not even giving Laurel a phone call until she came to her convinced that Sara was alive (who the fuck knew, maybe that really had been her in that picture instead of Jen Hunt after all)? Where had she been when their dad had turned to drink to cope with his grief over the loss of his girls (never mind that Felicity wasn't even his actual daughter, or even officially adopted, and that Laurel was still there for him)? Where was she when Laurel lost her job and ended up being disbarred because she had drunk a couple of wines before driving home a few times? When the quake happened?

Laurel would've asked where her sister had been when Ollie broke up with her for what seemed to be the final time, but Sara had never approved of her and Ollie's relationship. She'd probably have been on Felicity's side, damn her. Laurel wasn't even sure if she was cursing Felicity or Sara right then. Both of them, maybe.

She stalked into her boyfriend's office, startling him, and launched into a venomous tirade against her sister before he got a chance to greet her, not even noticing the man who Sebastian had meeting with. She was so wrapped up in her rant that she didn't notice the eyepatch-wearing man discreetly slipping out of the room, a smug smirk having started to play on his lips after overhearing her cursing Felicity for her part in Sara's disappearance and subsequent return.

"God, honey, I can't believe it," Sebastian told her earnestly, cupping her cheeks. "It's-Jesus. So you're saying that she's been alive all this time?"

"Yeah, and she didn't even come home straight after the 'quake," Laurel answered bitterly. "Our family needed her, grieved for her, and all of this time, she's been alive and doing fuck knows what, not caring the slightest bit about the rest of us thinking she was dead. How selfish can she be?"

"I don't know what to say," Sebastian admitted. "It sounds like something out of some sort of novel, or television show. Hang on a minute, I'll save my work and grab my coat, then we can head back to my place, okay? We can get some takeout and talk there."

Laurel nodded, sniffing a bit and wiping her eyes. "I'll just wait in the hall for you," she told him. He nodded, leaning in to kiss her softly for a second before leaning over his computer to tap away at whatever work he had open, while Laurel went back out into the other room to wait for him.

"Hello there Ms. Lance," a man with a low, intimidating voice, greeted her. She nearly jumped out of her skin, pressing one hand to her heart and staring in shock at the tall man dressed in a suit who was smirking at her. She shivered, all of her instincts whispering that the man was dangerous.

He had dark hair laced with traces of grey, a goatee, an eyepatch and a curved scar on his face. The accessory should have made him look ridiculous, but Laurel found herself feeling terrified instead. Pirates were villains in kids' movies, but this man...something told her that this man could probably break her neck with one hand, and would smirk that sinister smirk the entire time he spent doing so.

"My name is Slade Wilson," he informed her, his grin widening at her blatant fear of him. "And I believe we have something in common."

"Wh-what's that?" Laurel asked, mentally cursing her voice for shaking.

"We both want revenge on Felicity Queen."