Chapter 21

Author's Note: I wish I had a good excuse for this delay but the honest answer is I bought myself Skyrim Special Edition when the lockdown started and that's all I've done for the last three weeks. Sorry

Almost as soon as Winn had confirmed that the plans for the breach device would only allow an individual to travel between National City of Earth-38 and Star City of Earth-1, Oliver had stepped into command. After instructing Winn to put all his focus into tracking down the source of the hack (all Winn had been able to determine that the hack had been external), he had given the team orders to pack their equipment and prepare to return home. The DEO didn't have the technology to track the breaches that Cisco's device opened, but Felicity and Curtis could from The Bunker. Without pause, Oliver had offered Kara, Maggie, and Alex to come to Earth-1 with them to help track the breacher(s).

His offer hadn't been entirely focused on ensuring he had the best resources for the mission. Even with a new task in mind, Oliver saw the distance in Kara's eyes, the internal struggle within. From his own experience, he knew that putting as much distance between Kara and National City as possible would be the best thing for her. J'onn clearly shared that sentiment, and offered to patrol the city as Supergirl for however long she would be gone for, before Kara had the chance to use her alter ego as an excuse. Although, given how easily she agreed, Oliver doubted that she would have used that argument. Alex and Maggie were slightly more resistant, given that they both had jobs and lives in National City. J'onn handled that for them too, casually granting Alex a week free from her duties at the DEO, and offering to inform the NCPD that Maggie would be on secondment to the FBI for the foreseeable future.

With that done, the newly expanded Team Arrow set off for Earth-1.

It felt reassuring to Oliver to be back in Star City. The events of the Daxamite Invasion seemed strangely easier to process back on home ground, and even though the mission was to chase down a person or persons unknown who had stolen interdimensional breaching technology, doing it in Star City was just…calmer.

The unease of breaching dissipated as soon as Oliver's eyes landed on the familiar green hue of The Bunker. Knowing that the others were only a few steps behind him, he continued on forward, dropping his duffle bag of equipment down onto one of the chairs at the computer bank, then turned to wait. John was first through, closely followed by Dinah, Rene, and Curtis, each carrying a bag of their gear. The four joined Oliver at the computer bank after dropping off their bags. Behind them, the breach pulsated and a few moments later, Kara, Alex, and Maggie all jumped through. With everyone together, Oliver reached into his suit, grabbed the breach device and clicked it once again, and the gateway snapped shut.

Oliver looked out at a sea of expectant faces in front of him, knowing they were all waiting for him to tell them what to do next. Practically, Oliver knew there was functionally little they could do that night. The best they could do was identify the location the breacher(s) had arrived on Earth-1, and beyond that trying to track them down would be dependent on what it was their planets new visitors got up to. The Daxamite invasion had taken a lot out of them, two days of working to protect National City with very little rest, and no sleep to talk of. Oliver knew they needed to rest and reset before going after their next target.

"Curtis, set up the algorithm Cisco created to track breach locations," Oliver instructed. "Until that's run, we've got no information to work with. We've all had a heavy time of it, we'll pick the investigation up tomorrow." Oliver could tell that didn't agree with him, that she wanted to get straight back to work. "John, City Hall maintains a few reservations at The Starling Royal for VIPs, take Maggie, Alex, and Kara and check them in under my name. The rest of you go home, I'm going to head to City Hall and see what I've missed the last two days."

The majority of the group nodded their agreement with Oliver's assessment of the situation, thought it didn't escape his attention that Kara didn't do the same. The team all broke off to change out of their uniforms and back into civilian clothes, with Maggie gleefully checking out the various racks of weaponry lining the walls of the bunker, Alex at her side with fond look on her face. Kara lingered for a moment before walking up to Oliver.

"You seriously want to just stand around and wait?" Her voice was low so she didn't catch her sister's attention, but Oliver could still sense the annoyance in it.

"No, of course not," He kept his voice even, Oliver knew that Kara's frustration wasn't truly directed at him. "But Kara, we've got nothing to go on, no idea who hacked the DEO, where they arrived on this Earth, or what their motives are. Until Curtis' scan of the city finishes or Winn figures out who our hacker is, we can't make a move. You're a journalist, you know how this works."

Kara crossed her arms over her chest. "Then we go and find more information."

"Why do you think I'm going to City Hall?" Oliver asked, but continued before Kara could reply. "Being mayor gives me access to actionable intel, if there's anything that can help us, I can find it at City Hall." The change in Kara's mood was visible. "You can come with me, an extra set of eyes couldn't hurt."

Extending that offer was the best plan Oliver had to keep Kara occupied, he knew there was a decent chance she would want to go on patrol as Supergirl just to give her something to do with the frustration she was feeling. If they had still been in National City, Oliver wouldn't have thought twice before sending Kara out on patrol, he knew better than most that occasionally violence was a functional (if morally questionable) way to process difficult emotion, but he knew the criminals Kara would run across in Star City were nowhere near capable of dealing with Supergirl. His world was only three years into knowing that metahumans existed, he didn't want to unleash an alien on the criminal classes.

"You're right," Kara nodded after a moment, "Let's get going."

She didn't pause before turning on her heel and marching towards the elevator. Forcing himself not to smile, Oliver cleared his throat, and Kara span back around, looking at him expectantly. Oliver looked Kara pointedly up and down, before catching her eye again and raising an eyebrow. Kara threw him a questioning look before glancing down at herself then her focus snapped back to Oliver, her eyes a little wide.

"We should get changed first." Oliver allowed himself a small grin.

XXX

City Hall, as it turned out, was more useful than just distracting Kara. The two had arrived at Oliver's office and Kara had begun working through every report she could find attempting to find a lead while Oliver had caught up on his duties as mayor. By a minor miracle, Kara burnt herself out after little more than an hour, falling asleep on the sofa beside his desk, and Oliver had just smiled and draped his coat over her. It was no surprise to him that Kara has passed out, by his reckoning she had no rest after her fight with Rhea and clean up in National City. Oliver himself had worked until he had cleared enough of his official duties and then opted to get a few hours of sleep in the armchair next to the sofa.

When he woke up the next morning, their first lead was sitting in his emails.

"The scan Curtis ran showed almost a dozen breaches opened in Star City over the last fourth-eight hours," Oliver explained to everyone once they had gathered in The Bunker. "Which means we're definitely dealing with multiple breachers."

"It's got to be Lillian," Kara asserted with a scowl. "Who else could hack into the DEO mainframe like that?"

"It's possible, but I get the feeling this isn't Lillian," Oliver began.

It was understandable, Oliver supposed, that Kara's first reaction was to leap to Lillian. After all, Cadmus had proved time and again to be a more than formidable opponent. There were a few elements that didn't seem to add up to him though. Firstly, Lillian had been preoccupied during the invasion, first with saving her daughter and then with modifying Lex's dispersal device. Secondly, Oliver didn't see any reason why she would risk hacking the DEO when Lillian knew that she needed their help to carry out her plans. Thirdly—

"The ACU copy me in on any suspicious activity in the city and this morning I got the report of an overdose…"

"What's that got to do with the breachers?" Kara jumped in.

Oliver crossed his arms over his chest. "Because the Medical Examiner's report said that there were compounds in the bloodwork that, and I quote "are not readily available on this planet". What's the likelihood of that happening right now and it not being connected to the stolen scans? They must have come from Earth-38."

Oliver watched as that information settled in among the group. He could read nervousness from his team, frustration from Maggie, and the maelstrom in Kara was as evident as it had been on Earth-38.

"There's no way some drug runners could break the DEO firewalls," Alex observed. "They've got to have a benefactor; Lillian is a better candidate than anyone else."

In his mind, it didn't fit Lillian's M.O. "These are human casualties, Lillian has always been out for aliens. Her whole manifesto is about preserving human life."

"You pissed her off," Maggie pointed out dryly. "She knows who you are, and she's not above petty revenge."

That was a possibility that had resided far further down Oliver's list. Everything he had learnt about Lillian Luthor indicated that Maggie's suggestion was a possibility, but he had still been operating under the assumption that Lillian's anti-alien agenda would have held her back from killing humans in a method as senseless as sending alien narcotics to a world with no way of dealing with them. Then again, she did seem to be the kind of carry a grudge. With no solid facts either way to work on, Oliver knew he couldn't rule that out.

"It's on the table," Oliver agreed. "Whether or not it was Cadmus that hacked into the DEO systems we still need to track down our breachers and send them and whatever extra-terrestrial narcotics they're peddling down for a very long time."

The plan from there, Oliver knew, was simple enough. Designer drugs were a dime a dozen in Star City, every time the team or the SCPD took one off the streets another sprung up. It was a play they'd run a few dozen times. The extra help was going to make it even easier.

He began giving out instructions to the team:

"Dinah, take Maggie and Alex and head to SCPD, see if there's any more for us to go on. Now we know what we're looking for there might be more cases that have gone under the radar in the last two days." Even if Earth-1 didn't have Supergirl, they still had a National City and the FBI, which meant that Maggie and Alex's badges (even if the FBI one was fake) would get them through the door at SCPD if Dinah vouched for them.

"Rene, the overdose victim was found in The Glades, you know the area better than any of us, see if any of your contacts know who's peddling this junk." A more subtle approach would make it easier on all of them. If Rene could track down even a low level dealer then they would be able to get their hands on an uncontaminated sample of whatever had been shipped in from Earth-38, and Oliver had no doubt that Felicity and Curtis could use that to help track down a distribution locale.

"Curtis make a call to Barry and his team, if we can't track down the drugs through the usual paths maybe they have a way for us to track these breachers directly." It never hurt to have a Plan-B and, if Oliver was totally honest, being able to track the visitors from Earth-38 directly would be quicker.

"John, I want you to brief Lyla. As far as Winn is aware the plans for the breach device only allowed travel been National City on Earth-38 and here, but if this stuff makes it further than Star City then we could have an epidemic on our hands." With ARGUS appraised of the situation, they were covered on the off chance they hit a worst case scenario. Years of habit taught him to plan for that.

Which just left himself and Kara.

Thankfully, Oliver had been able to handle most of his work at City Hall that morning before Kara had stirred into consciousness. The only major issue on the city's agenda was dealing with the various criminals that had been released following Adrian Chase's unmasking as Prometheus, and Oliver himself only had one final issue on his desk – the appointing of a new district attorney. The former ADA Sam Armand had stepped up following Chase's arrest, but Oliver knew the appointment was only temporary. He either needed to officially promote Armand or find a suitable replacement. A weight crashed heavily into his chest as that thought ran through his mind, Oliver had no doubt in his mind that in a different reality Laurel might have been there to step up.

He blinked himself back to focus. "Kara, come with me."

Before Oliver got the chance to turn and walk away from the computer bank, Maggie managed to catch his focus and he to fight the urge to throw something heavy at the suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows. Instead Oliver settled for a scowl, which only made Maggie smile more, and turned on his heel. As Oliver moved over to the more open space behind the computer bank, he heard the sound of his expanded team heading into the elevator bank and out of The Bunker. The soft hiss of the elevator doors pushing shut reached his ears, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.

The knowledge that the rest of the team were away and that he and Kara were alone comforting him, Oliver came to a stop in front of the round table that took up much of the space behind the computer bank. He pulled out two chairs from under the table, then turned to Kara. From the look on her face, Oliver could sense the question building up in her; why the rest of the team was out on orders and she wasn't. Before she could ask it, Oliver gestured to one of the chairs, and then sat in the other. Even with the puzzled look on her face, Kara followed suit.

"I wanted to see how you were doing," Oliver began after a moment. "That anger I saw directed at Lillian Luthor back there? I know you well enough to know that's more than just your dislike for her."

Kara didn't meet Oliver's gaze for a while after that, and the two sat in the relative silence of The Bunker. It was still raw for Kara, Oliver knew that, the guilt and the pain she would be feeling. He knew from experience how easy it was to let that be directed to something or someone else, it was how Talia had forged him into The Hood after all. It was different for Kara though, Oliver didn't want to think about where Kara could end up if she let her guilt and her rage consume herself the way he had once done.

"I don't know how to describe it," Kara finally looked back at Oliver. "There's this…storm in my head and I just want it to go away."

It shouldn't have surprised Oliver that Kara didn't have the words to describe the torrent of emotions that came with taking a life for the first time, he certainly had never been able to do it. Despite his best wishes, there was nothing substantial he could offer to Kara to soften the blow, none of his team could either. Diggle and Rene were soldiers, Dinah a cop, they all knew sometimes taking a life was the only option. As much as he wanted there to be way for him to help Kara understand that Oliver wasn't sure she ever would.

His thoughts turned back to a conversation they'd had months ago, when Mxyzptlk had shown up on Earth-38. Though conversation wasn't entirely right, argument seemed more fitting. Then, he had called Kara naïve, wanted her to understand the shades of grey that he operated him. Looking back, part of him had resented Kara's optimism, had been jealous of her ability to live the same life as him without the darkness. As he looked at Kara in the green hue of The Bunker, he wanted nothing more than to stop Kara from ever having to deal with the pain he channelled into The Green Arrow.

"It won't," Oliver sighed after a few moments. It was a lie, of course, he had stopped feeling that kind of remorse for taking a life long ago. "But that's a good thing, Kara. Remember what I told you, never forget what a life is worth."

Or you'll become me.

Author's Note: This note has nothing to do with this story and just something that was on my mind that I wanted to voice here. So, I was working on an idea for another story and something hit me. One of the things early on in Arrow that really cut deep me was how Moira reacted when she realised Oliver was The Arrow, that moment where she told him how proud she was of him was just amazing. In the new reality of the Arrowverse Moira and Tommy both survived, and the idea of a reality where for six year Oliver had both his mother and his best friend to turn to for advice and for solace whenever things were tough is just amazing and I almost definitely will be writing a few pieces in the near future to handle the emotions I'm feeling about that.