"They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite"
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. Thanks to all my reviewers and everyone enjoying this.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Source of Grief

Lian Yu: late 2008

"What the fuck is that moron thinking, running off after Ivo alone?" Felicity demanded, a mixture of furious and afraid for her friend.

"Felicity, you don't understand. He isn't thinking. The Mirakuru"

"Well then explain it to me, Sara! What is Mirakuru, and what is it doing to Slade?" Felicity bit out frustratedly, raking her hands through her knotted hair. "Other than the thing that's going to, quote unquote, 'save the human race'?" She added with a bitingly sarcastic tone.

It had been just three weeks since Shado's death. Three weeks since they'd injected Slade with an experimental serum from World War II era Japan in a desperate attempt to save his life. In those three weeks (spent dodging Ivo's crew, whom they were pretty much at war with. The only thing on their side was that, after nearly two years of being stuck on the godforsaken hellhole, Felicity and Slade knew the place like the back of their hands and had a dozen different boltholes around the place set up to hide in for varying lengths of time), the ex-ASIS soldier had increasingly devolved mentally, and it seemed only partially due to Shado's death. Felicity had dark bruises in the shape of his hand on her neck and her voice was hoarse from him gripping her harshly by the throat when she had tried to stop him marching off after Ivo and his men right after the makeshift funeral they'd had for Shado, burying her beside the grave she, Shado and Slade had dug for Yao Fei after his death when they rescued Shado a year ago.

It was hard to believe how much her life had changed in such a short time. With every day that passed, her urban life with her family, running water, real toilets and a life where survival was a right, not something she needed to literally fight for, became more and more of a dream, while her instincts solidified into those of a warrior and a huntress.

The previous morning, she and Sara had woken up and found Slade missing, along with his things. He must have planned it, explaining why he'd volunteered to take the final watch. He'd left them vulnerable by doing so without waking either of the women, the selfish son of a bitch. They'd searched all of the hiding spots that Felicity could think of, but this was the last shelter they had and there was still no sign of him. She feared he'd gone after Ivo seeking revenge for Shado's death, a suicide mission even with. Stress and worry had led to her frustrated demand and Sara's response.

Sara bit down on her bottom lip, eyes worried and expression pinched, before she reluctantly spoke.

"Mirakuru-the project was discontinued for a reason, Felicity," she began in a slow, halting voice. "It was too dangerous. Too few of the subjects survived their injection, and those who did-they were deformed. Either in body or in mind. The serum works by basically keeping the adrenal glands producing adrenaline constantly to make them stronger, you know the way adrenaline can give a mother the strength to lift an entire car off her child? That strength is what the body gets from the Mirakuru, but at the same time the flight response is suppressed, leaving only fight. In turn this causes the person to become angry and it clouds their judgement, keeps them angry, enraged really, all the time.

The constant strain then leads to their mental states devolving. They start hallucinating, the smallest trigger will set them off. The men in Japan, they all went mad and had to be heavily sedated. The drug let them absorb the sedation faster than natural, so they had be kept hooked up to IV lines 24/7 to keep them unconscious.

Even then, it wasn't a fool proof solution. One managed to wake up from his sedation and broke out of his cell. He killed thirteen guards before a sniper managed to take him out with a bullet through the head. After that, the project was declared a failure. They had no way to reverse it, so the men were all gassed in their cells while still sedated. Then the research was all packed up and sent away on the sub to try and keep it from being discovered by the Allies, while being retained for a possible revisitation later on."

"If you knew it was so dangerous, why did you suggest it?" Felicity hissed furiously at the blonde, knuckles white as she gripped Shado's, now her, bow tightly.

Sara opened and closed her mouth, eyes shimmering with tears. "He was dying, and you and Shado were desperate," she said weakly. "I didn't-I didn't think it through. Oh God. I'm so sorry, Lissy."

"It's too late to reverse it now," Felicity grimaced and slung a spare quiver over her shoulder. "We just have to deal with the consequences as they come. Come on," she instructed the other woman briskly. Thoughts of how Slade might go about taking on so many opponents at once had sparked an idea. They'd left some of Fyers' weapons intact, namely the missile launcher that they didn't have the ability to destroy. It was conveniently located in a place that Slade would probably be able to use it to attack the Amazo. "We need to hurry. I have an idea where he might be. We need to find him and stop him before he does something irreversible."

Felicity stared out the window of Oliver's office, lost in painful memories of the island. She was so deep into her thoughts that John actually managed to catch her off guard. He walked up behind her and rested a hand on her shoulder, making her jump and reach for the knife hidden in her sleeve instinctively. She eased out of her defensive stance when she recognized her companion.

"Felicity, you alright?" Diggle asked, frowning at her concernedly.

"Yes, I'm fine," she insisted, smoothing down her skirt. "Just lost in thought."

Oliver had called her that morning to tell her there had been a break in at Applied Sciences. Felicity hadn't been too worried until she heard the Central City CSI's theory of a single thief stealing a Kord Industries industrial centrifuge.

"I bet you don't know how hard it is to break a person's neck," Allen had commented to her husband, who'd denied it truthfully and easily.

Felicity knew though. And she also knew that anyone injected with Mirakuru would be able to snap a neck one-handed with the same effort she would put into squashing a bug. She'd seen it happen.

She didn't want to believe it could possibly be connected to Mirakuru. The chances of her coming across anything linked to the project, which had been searched out and destroyed by both by her and later by ARGUS. It said a lot about the dangers of the drug, that even Amanda Waller considered it too big of a risk to take. Felicity had even written a virus that sought out any mention of the words 'Mirakuru' combined with 'drug', 'super strength', 'Japan(ese)' and 'World War II (project)', along with any variation in every language available to the ARGUS database (pretty much all of them). If more than two of the words were found linked together, the document was erased as thoroughly as possible. They would take no chances, and had released the virus into every search engine the agency could access. Waller's agents had orders to eliminate anybody discovered to be investigating Mirakuru with extreme prejudice as soon as it was confirmed.

Felicity had initially gone to alert Sara as soon as they'd left the Applied Sciences building. She'd even had the phone in her hand, but she'd stopped herself from pressing Sara's number at last minute. She needed more information before she began dragging up old nightmares for her friend. If it was a false alarm and Felicity was just being hysterical and seeing ghosts, then she'd be the only one to suffer the memory of that specific trauma.

Dig looked at her dubiously before giving into her stubborn expression. "Come on," he urged. "We need to talk to Oliver. Have you called Sara to tell her about the break-in?"

"She's in class at SCU," Felicity explained. The Canary had started the semester late, and was getting tutoring to catch up. It had been a favour from one of Dinah Lance's old friends, as Sara's mother had once been a professor there before moving to Central City, and she still had friends. "I'll brief her later."

Dig nodded and they made their way to the CEO's office. They found Oliver inside, studying his tablet with an expression of blatant disbelief.

"That CSI from Central was right," Dig said as they entered. "I just got a list from Applied Sciences. Only thing taken was the centrifuge. A few other things were damaged or broken, but that's all that's missing."

Felicity rubbed her thumb and forefinger together anxiously, heart pounding almost painfully.

"Well, that doesn't seem to be the only thing he was right about," Oliver remarked as he stood and moved around to show them the screen of his tablet. "I just got the CCTV footage. Look, you won't believe it. Maybe Felicity should check to see if it was doctored somehow or something. It just shouldn't be possible for this to be real."

Felicity swallowed harshly against the lump in her throat as she watched a man in a mask stride quickly from the warehouse, hefting the centrifuge, which probably weighed more than Diggle, over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He wasn't even bent over, and was almost jogging to the waiting truck.

She felt sick.

It was happening all over again. Her lungs seized and she clenched her hands into fists, nails digging into her palms. Instinct and trauma pleaded with her to pack up her family (including Dig, his family and the Lances), and run as far and fast away as possible. Maybe Antartica. Would that be far enough? Surely the twisted creature that had once been a man wouldn't be able to reach them there, particularly if they set up shop in some isolated glacier or something. She could hook something up, she was sure of it. Will could be tutored, and getting around Moira's monitoring anklet would be childishly simple. Oliver and she could run their companies from afar, and Dig would have more time for Lyla. Oh, she should probably bring Roy along too. She was actually fond of him, and Thea was head-over-heels for the young man. Sara could help her convince everyone of the pros of the move. The Canary would understand the decision to flee for their lives very well. She most likely had some contacts who could help them put down roots somewhere isolated.

"Felicity? Are you okay honey?" Oliver's worried voice broke through her racing mind, and she latched onto it like an anchor, using it to force her panic down and push away the flashbacks starting to play out in the midst of her hysterical planning.

She wasn't back on the island anymore, despite what her PTSD believed. She wasn't on the freighter, hand scrambling between the syringe of the possible-cure that might stop Slade and a discarded arrow that definitely would if her aim was true, struggling to stay awake and alive long enough to keep Slade occupied too long to escape the Amazo when the engines blew as per the plan. She'd had a rib piercing her left lung, her right leg had been broken in three places (and not cleanly either), and she'd also had a plethora of milder injuries, not to mention the after-effects of Slade's brutal torture. Still, she had fought with all her might to keep him focused on her so that he wouldn't realize they had sabotaged the ship's engines to make them blow until it was too late to get away.

But she wasn't there anymore, and she couldn't afford to let herself start thinking about those awful weeks after Slade had turned his rage and grief-induced desire for vengeance on her. Of the painful truth that she had killed him twice over. She'd killed the man he had once been, the good if cold one, when she injected him with the damn Mirakuru, and she'd killed his body when she stabbed him in the eye and let him be blown up with that cursed freighter.

"Felicity, are you alright?" Oliver repeated, blue eyes shining with concern for her. She cleared her throat and nodded.

"Fine," she said, voice hoarse. "I'm fine. Just worried."

"Felicity," Dig began, a perceptive look in his eye. "What do you know about this?"

She chewed the inside of her cheek, looking away from the two men who knew and read her far too easily for her comfort, her gaze landing on a family portrait of their family before the Gambit, complete with herself and Robert, that was hanging on the wall. A deep sigh escaped her as she reluctantly turned back to them.

"Pray that I'm wrong," she ordered them grimly. "Otherwise we're all in big trouble."

The look on her face stopped them from saying anymore, but she saw them exchanging worried looks in the reflection of the glass door as she excused herself to go and start hacking SCPD to see what was going on with the investigation.

After confronting the thief (and subsequently getting thrown out of a moving truck into a wall), Felicity couldn't deny it anymore, nor could she keep her suspicions to herself. The team had to know. The only explanation for the man's strength was that he had indeed received a Mirakuru injection, and was one of the few who had managed to survive it, god damn him and whoever gave it to him. How many were there? She shuddered in horror at the thought of an army of Mirakuru-injected people roaming the streets. At least Slade had been contained to Lian Yu. If one of those people was unleashed in an urban area, Felicity didn't want to even contemplate the possibilities of what would happen.

She made her way back to the base painfully, steeling herself. The others were waiting anxiously for her in the foundry. While the guys swore at the sight of her injuries and hurried to grab the med kit, Sara met her eyes. There was the faintest tremble in the Canary's hands, signalling that the guys had already given her the rundown and she too had come to same conclusions as Felicity.

"Is it Mirakuru?" Sara asked quietly. Too quietly for the guys, on the other side of the room, to hear.

Felicity bowed her head. "Seems like," she confessed miserably. Sara let out a shuddering breath and turned away, chewing on her knuckles.

"Alright, shirt off," Dig ordered. "We need to fix you up."

Felicity tugged off her jacket and thermal shirt, grimacing at the pain when she tugged her wounds, and stayed quiet as they cleaned away the blood and patched her up.

"So what happened out there, Felicity?" Dig asked once she was tended to.

Felicity accepted an offered hoodie from Sara, who was pale with a tense jaw, and began speaking as she pulled it on. "You were right, to wonder if I knew more than I was saying," she said to Dig. She motioned between herself and Sara. "We both do, actually."

"It's called Mirakuru," Sara cut in before either man could reply, neither appearing surprised. She'd hate how well they knew her if she didn't love them both so much. "It's Japanese for miracle."

"Miracle is not what I would consider it," Felicity added bitterly, expression and voice dark as midnight. "More like ken'o, abomination. That stuff is so fucked up."

Sara nodded. "It would fit better," she agreed darkly, before turning back to the confused men. "It's a drug that was first invented in World War II Japan," she explained. "Every country had their own mission to create a secret weapon that would let them win the war, and Mirakuru was Japan's." She paused, inhaling and exhaling.

Felicity took over to let her regain her composure. "You know Captain America from the Marvel comics? How he's injected with a so-called 'super serum' that gives him super-strength? It's like that. Except that Mirakuru also- it turns you insane. I saw a man who'd been injected with it literally rip a tree out of the ground by the roots and throw it at least six feet away in a fit of anger. Maybe even further."

"Jesus Christ," Dig breathed. Oliver also looked stunned.

"How the fuck is something like that possible?" He wondered, raking a hand through his short hair.

"When, when the yacht went down," Sara said unsteadily. "I was picked up by a freighter. The crew was under the command of a man named Dr Anth-Anthony Ivo. He had learned about Mirakuru and he was obsessed with finding the remains of the project. After the Japanese scrapped the project due to the majority of subjects dying and those surviving turning insane or becoming deformed, they stowed all the remaining samples and research on a submarine and sent it away to keep it secret and safe. That sub was then bombed by the Allies, causing it to sink just off the coast of an island in the North China Sea."

"Lian Yu," Oliver guessed. The two women nodded in grim confirmation, Sara crossing the room to start punching a training dummy to deal with the stress and panic coursing through her, while Felicity paced anxiously as she continued the story.

"In late '08, Ivo and Sara came to Lian Yu looking for the drug. They found it."

"Do you think this Ivo is in Starling City?" Dig questioned her with a concerned voice. She shook her head firmly.

"No way," she insisted.

"He's dead," Sara added coldly. "Felicity shot him twice point-blank, then I slit his throat and we threw his body overboard. And the crew all died too. If they escaped our attack, then they died when we blew the freighter. I don't understand how it could possibly have shown up again."

"Me neither," Felicity agreed darkly. "I deliberately erased any trace of that damn drug. ARGUS has an alert to allow them to find anybody who looks into it. Even Waller thinks it's too dangerous to risk using. She'd have anyone who looked into it shot before they could finish typing it into the search engine. And the chances of this being a coincidence are so low, they're basically non-existent. I just can't believe that the two of coming across something this rare twice, on two sides of the world, was a fluke."

"So you think this is some sort of attack against one of you?" Oliver said warily. She pursed her lips and shrugged.

"Mention of it would be in my ARGUS file," she suggested thoughtfully, having been mulling over this question for most of the day. "If somebody in the agency has a grudge against me, this would be a good way to psych me out. It- the whole thing was hard for me."

That was an understatement, and she could see the questions written over the guys' expressions. But they remained focused on the task at hand.

"Or someone from the League who resents my leaving might have organized it," Sara pointed out doubtfully. "What led me there was well-known there. But I doubt it. This isn't their style, and no one would dare do so without Ra's' permission. If he wanted me punished for something, he'd do it very differently. None of this psychological torture thing."

"So this might be an attack against one of you, but probably Felicity," Dig concluded. "But where'd they get it from, and why now?"

"There's only one way to figure it out," Sara declared, abandoning her assault on the training dummy and stalking over to join them. Her blue eyes blazed with fiery determination. "We gotta find this guy and make him tell us everything he knows about the Mirakuru, and who the fuck gave it to him. Then we kill them both."

She made it sound so simple, but Felicity knew it wasn't so. It had taken an arrow through the eye and being blown up to take down Slade, and this guy was surely similar. Even with her, Sara, Dig and possibly Oliver's help (much as she hated the idea of him being at risk, he had improved in leaps and bounds since joining the team. He still wasn't on any of their levels, but he could hold his own.), their chances would be slim.

God help them all.

Dread filled Oliver when Felicity pressed the panic button, the alert that she and Sara needed back up. She and Sara had gone after Cyrus Gold as soon as they had tracked him down to the ARGUS storage facility. Oliver and Dig had followed behind, waiting as back up, a med kit in the car.

He was worried for her, more worried than he'd been since she went after Malcolm during the Undertaking. Not only was the explanation of the abilities and effects of the Mirakuru beyond disturbing, but there were matching looks in Felicity and Sara's faces that made him worry they weren't prepared mentally for this fight. It was clearly triggering their PTSD. If whomever that was behind this wanted to put one or both of the pair off-kilter, they were being very successful.

"Felicity, this guy's muscles are so thick they dented a metal arrow!" He'd told her as she and Sara prepared to leave after she returned from speaking to Roy. "I looked it up, and they have to be at least the equivalent to solid concrete. You and Sara might be able to scratch him, but you won't be able to stop him."

She gave a strained, worried smile that failed to reach her eyes. No doubt she knew all of that already, better than him. She cupped his jaw with one hand while the other wound its way around his neck.

"I killed one of these guys before," she revealed. "And that was without Sara's League training, and minus four years of experience. I can do it again."

"Just promise me you won't hold back," he'd pleaded. "Kill him, before he kills you or Sara."

Her expression hardened, turning grim and resolved. "I don't count it as killing," she responded, meeting his gaze steadily. "If Sl-if previous experience has taught me anything, it's that the person who Cyrus Gold used to be died the moment that needle pierced his skin. I'll fight to come home to you and our son, Oliver. Always."

He held onto that promise as they raced inside the warehouse, guns held out in front of them and shouting for the two warrior women. His dread rose to crippling heights when neither responded. They found Sara first, bleeding from a knife wound to the upper abdomen and her head, breathing ragged and a bit of bone sticking out of her left arm. She neither moved nor responded when they tried to get a reaction out of her, but she was alive at least.

Felicity was near to her, slumped unconscious in a pile of boxes. There was no sign of any blood on her, but she failed to respond and for a panic-stricken moment, he couldn't see her chest moving.

"Is she alive?" Dig shouted from where he was frantically trying to stem the waterfall of blood that was pouring out of Sara's body.

"She has a pulse but she's not responsive!" Oliver shouted back. "She's been injected with something but it's coded. I don't know what it is!"

Dig yanked out his phone. "What's the code?" He demanded as he dialled a number. "Lyla," he greeted his girlfriend. "I need you to find out what's in this syringe, it was in an ARGUS warehouse." He repeated the number Oliver shouted at him. Meanwhile, Oliver was yanking out his own phone.

They had grown distant over the past couple of months, both of them stressed over the aftermath of the Undertaking and the revelation of Felicity's alter ego of Artemis, but Oliver still knew that Tommy wouldn't let him down.

"Ollie, man, do you realize what time-?" Tommy greeted him tiredly. Oliver guessed that he'd woken him up. He couldn't bring himself to care. Later he'd apologize maybe, but not now.

"Tommy, I need you to get to SCT as quick as you can," he cut him off, speaking as fast he could. Across the room, Dig had stowed his phone away and was gathering Sara into his arms. Oliver pressed his cell between his shoulder and ear as he lifted his wife. She didn't stir, head dangling awkwardly. "Sara was stabbed in the upper abdomen, and her head's bleeding. And Felicity was poisoned with something. She's not responding."

"Lyla says it's Factor IX!" Diggle yelled at him as he stowed Sara in the back of the car. Oliver slid in, supporting Felicity with one arm while pressing hard on Sara's stab wound with the other. He could hear Tommy scrambling around and Aly questioning him in the background of the call.

"Factor IX!" Oliver repeated urgently. "Felicity was poisoned with something called Factor IX!"

"Fuck!" Tommy barked. "I'm en route, I'll meet you there." Then he hung up, and Oliver let the phone fall to the ground, concentrating on supporting the two women. As Dig drove through the streets of Starling at breakneck speed, he prayed to a god he only half-believed in that they would live. They'd been through so much already, and retained their good hearts. They didn't deserve this. Will didn't deserve to lose his mother a second time, and it would kill Quentin to lose his girls again, right after getting Sara back.

'Please,' Oliver begged.'Please God, let them live. I'll do anything, just let them live.'