Chapter 17

Author's Note: And I'm back. Not 100% happy with this chapter but given that I had to take such a break for exam season I wanted to get this out to you as soon as possible. Plus, there mostly won't be any other huge changes to the canon until the end of, and after, the Daxamite invasion. That in mind, I do have most everything at least roughly planned until we catch up to where Chapter 1 flashed forward to, so fingers crossed it'll be smooth sailing from here.

Jeremiah Danvers had hidden himself well, completely off the gird and yet still well within range of National City. The cabin the former Cadmus agent had holed himself up in was well secluded in the dense woodland only a few miles outside of the city limits. Between the canopy above which almost wholly obscured the sky and the dense growth of vines that covered the roof of the cabin, Oliver wondered if Kara would even have noticed it in her scans from above. Had they not known exactly where to look for it, Oliver concluded, there was every chance they never would have found it.

At a glance, the place appeared to be deserted.

Oliver thought aloud. "Looks like no one's home."

"No, he's in there." Kara left no time before answering.

He hadn't wanted Kara to accompany him to ask for Jeremiah's help, but it had been a reluctant compromise. At first, Alex had insisted she be the one to chase down her father, assuring everyone that she had the best chance at talking him around. It wasn't that Oliver doubted that, from experience he knew the plea of a child to their parents was a powerful thing, it was difficult to refuse a request that came from family. It was Alex's emotional state Oliver didn't trust, he had seen first-hand just how volatile she had been when Jeremiah was found and his subsequent betrayal and disappearance. Knowing that, she was a risk he didn't want to have to factor in. The only thing that had dissuaded her from going after Jeremiah had been The President's orders, when Oliver had prompted her to remember that, she had begrudgingly agreed to allow Oliver to go after Jeremiah, on the condition Kara went with him. Kara was, Oliver reasoned, less likely to allow her emotional state to compromise her judgement – though if it did Oliver knew she would listen to him more so than Alex would have. Her powers were his issue, with Kara there he had no chance of talking to Jeremiah without her overhearing, no way for him to explain the truth to the other man.

"Let's go then." Oliver clenched his bow tighter as he spoke.

They stepped out of the treeline and into the small clearing where the cabin sat. The cabin had a clear line of sight on all angles of approach, and it was uncomfortably open ground for Oliver to be on, if Jeremiah had any kind of defences set up, he might not question who was approaching before deploying them. Oliver crossed the clearing with an eye constantly sweeping the line of the forest floor and the cabin. Nothing stirred. The fingers of his free hand twitched, ready to reach for his quiver at a moment's notice.

In any event, it wasn't necessary. They reached the door of the cabin without incident. Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver could see Kara was ready to burst though the door without hesitation and drag Jeremiah back to the city against his will if it came to it. Wanting to avoid an altercation, Oliver placed his free hand on Kara's upper arm, snapping her attention to him.

"Let me go in first," He began, "Jeremiah knows me, and I'm a neutral enough figure, there's less chance of him reacting…unpredictably."

Kara paused for a moment, and it was more than clear in her features that she wasn't overly keen on his suggestion. After a moment though, Kara nodded her agreement and Oliver breathed a small sigh of relief. He had been right; Kara did listen to him.

"Please, just be quick," Kara pleaded. "We're running out of time."

"Don't worry, Kara." Oliver offered her a small smile.

Oliver turned to the door, hand closing around the brass handle and pushing it open. The cabin was nowhere near as naturalistic and stripped back as its exterior suggested. The wall directly opposite the door was lined with server banks and monitors, racks held equipment that Oliver couldn't fully understand. Cabling ran across the floor and down a hatch in the floor in one corner of the room, presumably leading to a generator of some kind, identifying the faint thrumming Oliver had heard when they had been lingering outside. Set in the adjacent wall, to Oliver's left, were two doorways, leading to what seemed to be a kitchen through one and a bathroom through the other. The rest of the room Oliver found himself in was set up similarly to any open plan home, a simple kitchen/dining area occupied the immediate space, and a little further along the room was a living space. Large panelled windows sat in the wooden walls, the mid-day light they filtered through the thick canopy above casting harsh lines across the walls and floor.

Sat on one of the sofas of the living space, screwdriver in hand and fiddling with the mechanisms of his one enhanced arm – was Jeremiah Danvers.

"I knew you were coming," He spoke without looking up. "Just so we understand each other, if my daughter hadn't been with you, you wouldn't have made it within a mile of this place."

There was something in Jeremiah's voice Oliver didn't doubt, a level of conviction that set him on edge. Whatever goodwill Oliver had earned himself by allowing Jeremiah to flee following his betrayal of Cadmus had clearly already been spent simply by his tracking the other man down. Fingers of his free hand itching to be filled with the smooth composite of his arrows, Oliver stepped forward.

"I think we understand each other well enough, Jeremiah," Oliver kept his voice even. "But your daughters need you. You're done hiding."

The thread of finality Oliver had put into his voice made Jeremiah look up. The older man put down the screwdriver and got to his feet, taking a few weighted strides in Oliver's direction. Jeremiah looked him up and down, looking for what Oliver had no idea, and then gritted his teeth.

"Kara, you can stop lurking at the door now." He announced at no higher volume than he had been using to talk to Oliver.

Oliver didn't look around, but he heard Kara's tentative footsteps as she walked into the room. In the few short moments Oliver had left her outside, her nerves had seemingly overtaken her anger towards her adoptive father. When Oliver felt Kara's presence beside him, he turned his head to look at her. It was a little strange to see, the way Kara held herself beside him. When she wore her suit, Kara Zor-El carried herself differently, stood taller, prouder, with none of the slightly hunched over anxiety of Kara Danvers. To see her looking so nervous and still clad in her super-suit – Oliver's thoughts were cast back to the only other time he had seen that image, when she had confessed her feeling to him.

"We…we need your help." Kara began, standing a little taller. "The Daxamites are attacking National City and—"

"I can't," Jeremiah cut over his adoptive daughter. "Kara, honey, if I could help you I would, but invasion or not, if I show my face in National City J'onn and the rest of the DEO aren't going to just forgive what I've done."

Jeremiah's stout refusal pushed Oliver a little too far in the wrong direction.

"There's two civilian hostages on the Daxamite mothership, and Alex has been given orders by The President to destroy it with the DEO positron cannon." Oliver fixed Jeremiah with a gaze that left little room for debate and continued. "Either you help us get on board the ship and save them, or Lillian Luthor does."

Jeremiah Danvers narrowed his eyes, gaze flickering between Oliver and Kara. The silence sat between them for a moment, Oliver's ultimatum heavy in the air. You help us, or Kara is indebted to the woman who threatened to kill your entire family.

Oliver didn't even need to wait for him to give his answer.

XXX

By the time the three had made it back to Al's Bar, Alex and Maggie had already departed for the DEO, John appraised Oliver of that as soon as he walked through the door.

"They said they'd hold out until the last possible second to breach, but we've got another hour at best." The ex-soldier informed him as they walked across to where Winn and Curtis were sorting through a pile of equipment.

"We've got our way through the ship security, as soon as Curtis and Winn can make the upgrades extracting Lena and Mon-El should take less than ten minutes." Oliver raised his voice just enough so that everyone heard him and snapped their attention to him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver watched Kara and Jeremiah. The journey back to National City had been filled with uncomfortable silence once Oliver had informed Jeremiah of his plan, broken only by attempts at finding a placatory middle ground by Kara. The tension between the two could be a problem, one Oliver had been hoping wouldn't come up. He had been sure to keep Alex away from her father, and he had banked on Kara's endless capacity for forgiveness preventing any tension with her adoptive father. Apparently, he had miscalculated. Kara had a breaking point after all.

"I've been through the data Kara got from Hank Henshaw and I think we've got everything we need to apply the same upgrades to…" Winn glanced across at Jeremiah. "Your cyborg arm."

Jeremiah nodded and quickly moved to the equipment Winn and Curtis had gathered. "Then let's get to work."

"You still haven't explained how we're getting onto the ship." Kara pointed out.

Oliver allowed a grin to tug at the corner of his lips. "With this." He pulled a breach device from one of the pouches on his suit and held it up. "Winn modified them for short range use, plug in the coordinates of the ship and we can breach right in undetected."

"Listen, we're forgetting the biggest obstacle of all here. Rhea." Winn pointed out. "Right? I mean she took Lena and Mon-El for a reason. She's going to be watching them. She's gonna need to be distracted if we're going to go in there and rescue these guys."

Can't plan for everything. Oliver thought as he realised Winn was right. He had gotten so caught up in planning how to break into the ship that Rhea hadn't even crossed his mind. Sure, he had expected a few guards that might get in the way but Winn had a point. There was every chance Rhea would be watching the two on whatever kinda of monitoring systems the Daxamite ship had.

"We're gonna need one hell of a distraction." Rene scoffed.

"I'm the queen of distraction." The group wheeled around to find Cat Grant still stood at the bar.

"Ms. Grant, this could be dangerous." Kara crossed her arms over her chest.

Cat almost smiled. "No. No. This will be dangerous, but if it's dangerous for all of you why shouldn't it be dangerous for me?"

Oliver admired Cat's bravery. From Kara's stories he knew the woman had faced death multiple times and come out on top, but to be willing to make herself a target for a whole invading army, Cat Grant wasn't an average human.

"But I'll need Winslow."

"Me? Really?" Winn asked wide-eyed.

"Well I'll need someone to press all those buttons."

On the opposite side of the table, the soldering iron Curtis had been using on Jeremiah clicked off and Oliver turned his attention back to them. Jeremiah lifted his arm back up from the table and flexed it for a moment. Oliver watched as the mechanical components twisted and shifted shape for a few seconds before returning to a more human appearance.

"It works." Jeremiah nodded.

They were ready to move.

"Curtis, go with Winn and Ms. Grant, keep them safe," Oliver began giving out orders. "John, Dinah, Rene, get out onto the streets. When our distraction starts hit the troops on the ground with everything you have, give the civilians as much cover as you can." He took a breath in, squared his shoulders, and raised his voice to address the whole room, DEO spooks included. "The Daxamites might have the advantage right now, but we've got something they don't have. We've got each other, and a reason to fight. This is not their world, so let's get out there, and remind them who this planet really belongs to."

XXX

Winn provided them with coordinates for the extrapolator, hopefully placing them down somewhere near the cargo bay of the mothership where there would be no on in sight, but that was, in his own words, an educated guess. The moment Oliver had been informed that Winn and Curtis had set up the broadcast for Cat Grant, Oliver clicked the extrapolator into life and leapt through the breach with Kara and Jeremiah on either side. Oliver gritted his teeth as he suffered the unfathomable sensation of crossing through warped reality and blinked onto the Daxamite ship.

Before he could even adjust to their new surroundings, Kara had taken a swift stride forward, and levelled a guard with a bone crunching right cross. He could practically sense the tension radiating from the Kryptonian: the fear of losing her friends, the anger at seeing her city turned into a warzone, the conflicted swirl of emotions that being once again reunited with her adoptive father brought. Better than most, Oliver knew letting those emotions fester too much could lead to disastrous consequences, and in that moment knew not to let Kara out of his sight.

The immediate threat to them knocked unconscious and his worries about Kara processed, Oliver looked to his surroundings. With his grand total of one previous experience in a spaceship, Oliver had held no preconceptions about what might be thrown at him once they boarded. Over a decade of experience under his belt, dealings with things that could drive most people to insanity, accepting that there was, ultimately, not real way to prepare for the infinite possibility the multiverse could produce, had taught Oliver a lesson:

Don't expect anything and you will be ready for it.

To the end, the Daxamite ship didn't look wholly different from any ARGUS, DEO, or even Cadmus facility that Oliver had seen. Metallic grey walls, neon-esque strip lighting. Familiarity was good.

In the few seconds Oliver had taken to process the new environment, Jeremiah had moved to a computer panel mounted in one of the walls of the room. The device Curtis and Winn had helped to build into his cybernetics folded out from his arm, and with his other hand Jeremiah plugged it into the computer. The cyborg's gaze drifted for a few moments, then snapped back to reality.

"There's only one lifeform other than us registering as human on this ship," Jeremiah informed them as he tucked the Daxamite connector back into his cybernetic arm. "I've got a fix on it."

He didn't wait before taking off through the door, Kara quick on his heels. At a more cautious pace Oliver followed behind them, arrow nocked in his bow and ready to draw at the first sign of trouble. While he and Kara had been locating Jeremiah, Oliver had given Diggle instructions to prepare as many lead-based armaments as he could for the whole team. The DEO had provided more than enough live ammunition and weapons – Oliver had a standard handgun strapped to his thigh just in case – but Digg had manged to gather enough lead plating for Oliver to line the edges of most of his arrows.

Cat Grant's distraction must have done its job well, Oliver noted as they moved through the halls of the Daxamite ship, there were fewer guards patrolling than he had been concerned there would be. With limited resistance, the odd one or two guards that Kara disabled before they could so much react notwithstanding, the three tracked down the other human signature in no time at all.

"Behind that door." Jeremiah nodded down the corridor ahead of them.

Three Daxamites stood between them and the door. Oliver didn't even get the chance to raise his bow before Kara sped down the corridor. As the Kryptonian handled the three guards, Oliver and Jeremiah quickly moved down to join her at the sealed door. The cyborg turned to another wall mounted panel, ready to plug in the interface cable again, but the door slid upwards before he could. On the other side of the door, stood Lena and Mon-El.

It was almost visible, the way the tension flooded from Kara as she saw her two friends, and Oliver couldn't fight down the small smile that crept onto his lips at the sight.

"Supergirl?!" A smile spread quickly across Lena's lips as she saw the hero.

"Hi!" Kara beamed back, placing her hands on her hips. "Kara Danvers sent me to get you."

Oliver turned his back as Kara tried to play off her exhilaration at saving her friends as just another day in the life of the superhero. Despite the nearest guards having been taken out, Oliver still couldn't help the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that told him they were still in danger. A little unsurprisingly, Oliver's instincts were proved right as another guard appear from around the corner. There was no hesitation as Oliver lifted his bow and fired an arrow centre mass, watching as the Daxamite crumpled to the floor.

"We need to get out of here." Oliver's voice modulator warbled as he turned back to the group and pulled the breach device from his pocket. For the sake of keeping Kara's life simpler, Oliver thought it best Lena not know who he was under the mask.

With a click of the device, a breach snapped open just behind Lena and Mon-El. The Luthor heiress looked taken aback for a moment at the sudden tear in spacetime, but quickly got her shock under control. At a nod of encouragement from Supergirl they began heading through. Oliver stayed by her side as Lena, Mon-El, and Jeremiah all returned to Al's bar through the breach. When she didn't move towards the swirling gateway either, Oliver clicked the device once more, and the gate closed. He knew it wasn't hesitation, they both knew Alex would be aiming the positron cannon at the ship they stood on, that in minutes they would be blown out of the sky. Just like she had the last time Oliver had been on her Earth, Kara was determined to find another way.

"Oliver, what are you doing?" Kara turned to him, voice raised.

"I know what you're going to do," He smiled, voice modulator off, and with his free hand Oliver pushed back his hood. "You want to offer Rhea a chance to surrender."

Kara didn't even seem surprised that he had predicted her so well. "The positron cannon is aimed right at us, you need to—"

"If you're staying," Oliver cut over her. "So am I."

A wisp of a smile crossed her lips. "Then let's go, we don't have long before Alex is going to be forced to shoot us down."

XXX

There had been even less resistance getting to the bridge of the Daxamite mothership than there had been trying to get to Lena and Mon-El, and even when they did come across soldiers there was almost no fight in them – it was odd. Oliver had voiced that thought as he and Kara closed on the bridge, but she had brushed it off as them knowing they were fighting a losing battle. Nerves alight and senses poised for anything abnormal, Oliver followed Kara onto the bridge.

Only two royal guard remained, stood across the room from where he and Kara entered. Oliver dropped them with a quick volley of shots and swivelled for other entrances to the room as Kara approached the Queen of Daxam.

"It's over, Rhea." Kara announced as she approached the older woman. "I came back to give you one last chance to do the right thing."

"How generous of you." Sarcasm dripped from Rhea's tone.

"When I was a child," Kara continued unperturbed. "I could look up into the skies and see Daxam among the stars. I was told so many times how terrible a place it was, but I couldn't understand that. Because they had families, like us. People they loved. In a few minutes, this ship will be destroyed, and everyone on it. You don't want that. Save your people, while you still have time."

"Touching speech, Supergirl," Something in Rhea's voice tugged at Oliver's concerns, and he turned to face her, arrow still nocked in his bow. "Undercut slightly by your snarling attack dog over there and, sadly, wasted on the wrong audience. When my own husband opposed me, I killed him. You really think you can tug at my heartstrings?"

Oliver had doubted Kara's ability to convince Rhea to change her mind from the moment he had figured out it was what she had planned to do all along. As with most things, he looked to the outcome most would consider pessimistic. With that admission from Rhea, Oliver began to work on an exit strategy. His gaze flicked up to the windows that comprised the wall behind Rhea, with any luck the high-yield explosive arrows in his quiver would be able to break them, and failing that Oliver had no doubt that Kara could. After that, it was just a matter of getting outside and making it to the ground before Alex fired the cannon.

"You were right about one thing though," Rhea stepped towards Kara. "It is over. For you."

His grip tightened on his bow, muscles moving to begin to pull back on the drawstring as Rhea circled Kara. It was an instinctive reaction. Even though Oliver was more than aware Kara was beyond capable of handling herself, the threatening tone and stance Rhea held begged for a response from him.

"Supergirl," Rhea hissed the name like venom. "You really thought you'd won, didn't you?"

He caught it too late. Rhea had played them both. With grandstanding and threats Rhea had kept their focus on her just a little too long. It was only the faintest of movement in the edge of his peripheral that alerted Oliver to the new presence. In the back of his mind, Oliver wondered if he would have noticed it sooner if he hadn't spent so much time with Kara. That slight snap of red and blue blur in the corner of his filed of vision had become such a repeated occurrence during his time on Earth-38 Oliver had subconsciously softened to it.

"Kara!"

Even as he called her name Oliver knew it was too late. Kara wheeled around just in time to catch a blow to her cheek that sent her spiralling across the room. With a groan Kara pressed a hand to the floor and forced herself to look upright.

"Superman?"