Retrieval

Thea was almost asleep in her chair when she heard footsteps thundering down the stairs. They were too light to be Oliver, Laurel, or Diggle, and Sara almost never made a sound when she moved. In her exhausted and hopeless mind, Thea thought that maybe it didn't even matter if the visitor were friend or foe. Maybe nothing mattered anymore.

"Hey, girl," Sin's voice echoed once the footsteps stopped. "Come on. Get up!" Sin's hands were suddenly on Thea's elbows, lifting her from her seat insistently.

"Why?" Thea demanded in a whiny voice, dragging her feet in defiance.

Sin gave her one final, extra hard shove and Thea was on her feet. "Because, I think I might have found out who was working with Felicity on the mirakuru cure," Sin said excitedly, planting herself in the chair she had just evicted Thea from and rolling over to Felicity's gallery of monitors. She pulled up a log-in page for an e-mail site on the internet.

"I already tried getting into Felicity's e-mail account, Sin. She's got an airtight password and a ton of security," Thea reminded the younger girl. "And that's not even the site that hosts Felicity's e-mail account anyway."

"Yeah, because she's smart," Sin replied. "Really smart. Which is why I wasn't especially surprised when I found out that the e-mailing account we were trying to get into was a red herring. See, about a month ago, right after Hurricane Roy tore through the city, the purchase of an internet uniform resource locator was charged to a credit card listed under the name, Edward R. Rockwell."

Thea rolled her eyes and rubbed her forehead. "Sin," she began tiredly, "what does some random guy buying a uniform resource locator – and, by the way, I don't even know what that is – have to do with the mirakuru cure?"

Now Sin rolled her eyes at Thea. "It's important because four years ago, when she was a graduate student at MIT, Felicity was married to Edward Rockwell," Sin explained.

"Okay . . . wow. Uh, so . . . Felicity has a husband, or ex-husband or whatever. I have to admit, I never saw that one coming, but why does it matter that Felicity's ex bought something on the internet?" Thea asked.

"It matters because a year after he married Felicity, Edward Rockwell died in a car accident. He's been dead for three years," Sin told her. "So him buying an internet uniform resource locator, more commonly known as an internet URL, about a month ago? Not really possible. However, Felicity using a credit card under her late-husband's name to buy a URL to a website called ? Not entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially when that website has an e-mail system with a single user ID– smoak.f ." Sin grinned proudly and input her own e-mail user ID and password to the website as she continued, "And, when you access that e-mail account, you can see several e-mails exchanged back and forth with two correspondents, both with IP addresses that can be linked back to S.T.A.R. Labs, which I forwarded to my own e-mail address."

Thea put her hand on the back of Sin's chair and leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen. "And how exactly did you find all of this?" she asked cautiously.

Sin shrugged nonchalantly. "I know a guy," she answered, choosing not to elaborate on how she knew this guy or who he was.

Thea smirked but didn't press her for any more information. Knowing Sin and her methods of information gathering, it was probably better that way. "Did this 'guy' happen to figure out who Felicity's S.T.A.R. Labs contacts were?" she asked in lieu of the more dangerous questions.

"He didn't have to," Sin said. "All the e-mails accounts for S.T.A.R. Labs employees contain their first and last names. In this case," – Sin clicked on two separate e-mails and panned out so that one e-mail was visible on the screen they'd been looking at and the other e-mail was visible on the screen next to it – "Caitlin Snow and Francisco Ramon."

Sin pushed herself away from the monitors so that Thea could take a closer look. After a few moments of quiet viewing, Thea turned to Sin and smiled. "Sin, you did it!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around Sin's neck and hugging her. "God, you have got to be the best friend I've ever had. Easily."

"Our boy doesn't have a lot of family," Sin said. "Just you and me, and God knows he's a complete numbskull when it comes to taking care of himself. Somebody has to do it, right?" It was meant to be said jokingly, but when Thea pulled out of their hug, Sin could see the flicker of despair in her friend's eyes. "He's not alone, and neither are you, Thea.

"Look," she began with a sigh, shoving her hands into her back pockets and making herself as small as possible the way that she did when she was feeling small on the inside, "I know what it's like to lose both your parents. It can make you feel like the whole world has suddenly turned on you. I didn't have anyone, no one until Sara found me. You got me and Roy, you've got your brother, you've got Laurel and Sara, and we got your back, T."

Thea beamed. "I've got your backs too. I hope you know that."

"I do," said Sin. "Now let's go save Roy."

The streets were dark and lit only by a few waning streetlights and the waxing moon above. Leaves rustled against the wet pavement as a breeze blew the channels created by the red brick buildings of a quiet, sleepy little section of Park City. The rainstorm had chased the city's people inside when it had hit, and by the time it passed, most of them were safely asleep in their beds, ignorant to the rumbling purr of a motorcycle riding almost soundlessly around the neighborhood square before pulling to a stop in front of the blinking neon sign reading, MOTEL, in pink bubble letters.

The rider climbed gracefully off the bike and removed her helmet, blonde hair spilling out and falling across her shoulders and back as she did so. She shook water from her leather jacket, pants, and boots, before making her way into the homely little establishment, which, not unlike herself, had once been a sight to see but had become rundown and beaten over time.

She tried not to think of her home and the people she wished she could surround herself with again. She wanted to wake up and have the last six years of her life be erased and the darkness that had settled inside of her removed. Without the title of assassin, vigilante, or castaway, Sara didn't know who she was.

This city had been her landing place for the last two weeks. She might have gone further, if she could have brought herself to put any more distance between her and the city that held everything that she cared about. Her friends and her family; her dad and Laurel, Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle, Thea and Sin. She wondered idly what they thought of her now.

Sara climbed the three flights of steps up to her room, barely making a sound as she walked. Sometimes her silence even made her uneasy, though she really should have been used to it by now. She slid her key into the lock and turned the handle. Her room was dark and quiet, but Sara knew immediately from the way that the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, that something wasn't right.

She wasn't alone.

Her hand reached back for the four-inch blade tucked into the her waistband. Her fingers curled tightly around the hilt, and she unsheathed it without making a sound. She waited with the patience of a predator, and made her way over to the floor lamp by the bed. As soon as the light flickered on, Sara saw a person sitting in the chair in the corner in her peripheral vision, and she lunged.

Two hands stopped her oncoming blade and she heard an all-too-familiar squeak of fear and exertion. Sara stopped trying to stab the unexpected visitor and stood back. She stared at her incredulously.

"Felicity?!" she demanded. "What the hell did you think you were doing?! I could have killed you! I was going to kill you!"

In a single fluid motion, Felicity had lifted herself from the chair and sidestepped Sara with wide, alert eyes that were still trained on the steel of Sara's knife. The bespectacled girl gulped visibly. "Yeah, um, I'm really glad that you didn't, because . . . wow, getting stabbed to death by a friend really isn't how I pictured myself dying," she said emphatically. "Not that I picture myself dying a lot. Well, I kind of do, what with all the near-misses and everything, and in our line of work, it's really not outside the realm of possi–"

"Felicity," Sara broke in firmly, fixing the girl with a hardened stare. "What are you doing here? How did you even find me?"

At first, when Felicity's gaze fell to the floor, Sara was a little afraid that she had hurt or offended the other woman, but then Felicity said, "Your boots. I followed the tracking device in them."

"I removed that chip days ago," Sara told her skeptically.

"Well, yeah, sure, one of them," Felicity reiterated. "The other one is still active." She met Sara's unimpressed look and she blushed, "I'm guessing you didn't know there was a chip in each of the heels?"

"Because one wasn't enough?!" Sara demanded.

"Evidently not," Felicity scoffed. "I mean, you did find the first one, so . . . I'm glad I planted a second one."

Sara tilted her head back and groaned in exasperation. "Okay, let's try this again," Sara said, refocusing on Felicity's face. "Why are you here, Felicity? If Oliver sent you, you can tell him–"

"Wow," Felicity interrupted loudly, before launching into a one-woman dialogue. "'Hey, Felicity! It's great to see you!' 'It's great to see you too, Sara. I'm glad to see you're alive even though you tore out of town like the city was on fire!' 'Yeah, sorry about that. I needed some time to myself.' 'I completely understand, Sara. I'm sorry for having to bother you, and I'm just glad that you aren't acting at all hostile towards me after I drove seven hours to come find you because Slade Wilson murdered Moira Queen in front of both her children and Laurel now knows Oliver is the Arrow and you're the other vigilante, and she was right about Sebastian Blood being a murderous, raving psychopath.'"

Suddenly Sara felt like Felicity had slapped her with 9000 volts of electricity. For a moment she just stared speechlessly at her friend, unable to comprehend what she was being told, much less formulate a response to it. It couldn't be true. Laurel couldn't know. Moira Queen couldn't be dead.

"You're lying to me to get me to come back to Starling City," Sara accused halfheartedly.

Felicity's steady ice-blue eyes met Sara's cool gray ones. "You know me, Sara. I'm a lot of things: a rambler, a computer geek, an accomplice to two wanted vigilantes, and I've just recently added 'Bitch with Wi-fi' to that list of titles. But one thing I am not is a liar. I wouldn't lie to you just to get you to come back to Starling. In fact, as much as it hurts me to say this, if things weren't so dire right now, I would have let you take your time and come home on your own terms, but that option has been taken out of my hands."

Felicity took a step forward and reached out her hands for each of Sara's, waiting for Sara's eyes to return her gaze before she continued. "I'm sorry, Sara. I really am. I know that what you need most right now is time and space to clear your head and heal your heart, and I hate to be the one to drag you back into the chaos and darkness, Sara, but if you stay away now, you won't have a home to come back to. Everyone you love . . . everyone who loves you . . . we'll all be dead."

Sara felt her perfect hardened mask of indifference beginning to soften and shatter the longer she met Felicity's pleading, periwinkle eyes. She felt tears of frustration and fear and shame start to well in her own. She knew, in her very heart of hearts, that Felicity would never lie to Sara, even if she weren't a terrible liar.

"I can feel this darkness inside of me, Felicity. How am I supposed to stop a man whose soul is no worse than my own?" she asked, praying that Felicity – with all her endless knowledge – would have an answer for her.

Felicity seemed to give serious thought to the question, and Sara loved her all the more for taking it seriously. "Do you know what darkness is in scientific terms? It's the absence of light," Felicity said. "That's it. That's all it is. And you might think you've lost your light, Sara, but I'm telling you, it's still there. I've seen it in you. All you need is someone who can show you the way back to it. Let me be that person for you. Hell, I've got GPS and everything," she punned, causing Sara to laugh.

The hacker took another step closer to Sara and raised her hands to Sara's cheeks. As she focused on clearing away the moisture from Sara's face, Sara watched her intently. It wasn't as if Sara had been blind to it before, but up this close, Felicity was stunning. Of its own volition, Sara's hand raised to tuck hair behind one of Felicity's adorably dainty ears, and Felicity's gaze reconnected with hers once more.

"Anti jamilah," Sara whispered, so close that she could see Felicity's eyelashes fluttered when her breath washed over her face.

"What does that mean?" Felicity asked.

Sara opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Felicity just continued looking at her, as if in a trance.

"Sara . . . Sara . . . Sara–"

"–Sara," Laurel was saying, trying to rouse her little sister from her sleep.

"Hmm . . ." Sara groaned as she was pulled from her dream.

It was almost like a memory, of the night that Felicity found her in Park City and convinced her to come back to Starling. With one major difference. She hadn't kissed Felicity. She hadn't even thought about it at the time.

"Hey, wake up," Laurel told her. Sara lifted her upper body from the edge of Felicity's hospital bed and looked up at her older sister. "Sin and Thea cracked the mystery of the mirakuru cure source. It was her contacts at S.T.A.R. Labs. The girls are on their way over there right now. Oliver and Diggle are gearing up for a fight. As soon as Roy is cured, they're going to face off with Slade Wilson's army."

Sara shook off her sleepiness and psyched herself up for the challenge that she knew awaited them. "Once they cure Roy, he won't have the strength or regeneration that he does under the effects of the mirakuru," Sara remarked darkly. "It'll be Oliver, Digg, Roy, and I against a whole army of super powered soldiers. I'm all for rooting for the underdog and everything, but I'm not too thrilled with those odds."

Laurel frowned, watching her younger sister push herself to her feet. Sara's body looked strangely deflated and the dark circles under her eyes made her exhaustion evident. Even as skilled as Sara obviously was, she was in no condition to fight super-soldiers right now.

"There's got to be others, people who can help you fight Wilson, right?" asked Laurel hopefully.

Suddenly, Sara had a really horrible bright idea. The others weren't going to like this, and she knew because even she didn't like it. It was becoming more and more evident that they were running out of options.

"No. Absolutely not," Oliver said sternly, pacing the length of the training space in the new lair. He kept shooting glares at Sara and expectant looks to Diggle, as if asking for Digg to back him up, but the bodyguard remained silent.

"Oliver–"

"SARA, it's a bad idea," Oliver cut her off.

"You think I don't know that?!" Sara demanded, taking a few angry paces toward the green-clad man before Laurel grabbed her elbow to steady her. "I don't want to do this, Ollie, but we're running out of options! We're outnumbered, we're overpowered, and Slade has been two steps ahead of us this entire time! He's toying with us and I've had enough! We either need to cure him or we need to take him out, and we need to do it now, before anyone else dies!"

"And you really think that they are going to be happy to just cure Slade and leave him alive?!" Oliver demanded loudly. "They're killers, Sara!–"

"SO AM I!" Sara screamed, silencing everyone in the room. "So are you! Digg killed people as a soldier, Laurel killed Daley in self-defense, my father has had to shoot to kill before on the police force!"

Sara felt anger surge through her as Oliver continued to look at her with a pigheaded expression on his face. "You assume that everyone in The League is so evil because they're assassins, but they don't go around murdering innocent people left, right, and center, Oliver! They kill people like Slade, like Merlyn, who would do terrible things if they were allowed to live. They kill the people who are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to secure their own delusional vendettas! The League stops a lot of dangerous people and catastrophic events before they even happen. That's what they do. That's what I did."

Oliver took two steps toward her. "You are not that person anymore–" he tried to assure her.

"–No, I'm not," she interrupted. "The person I am now, Oliver? The person you are? We're not capable of doing what needs to be done. You couldn't kill Slade five years ago and, if it came down to it, you couldn't kill him now either, and we both know it. Ra's al Ghul can. Nyssa can. The assassins of The League, they can.

"We remember Slade the way he was before he became what he is now. He took care of you, he taught you how to fight, and he taught you how to survive. I led you to the mirakuru and you injected Slade with it," Sara reminded him. "We did that. We created this version of Slade Wilson, but we also remember who he was before Ivo killed Shado because you jumped in front of his gun to save me. He was our friend, and the both of us will always feel some responsibility for turning him into the monster he is now. Ra's and Nyssa aren't tied to him the way that we are."

Oliver swallowed visibly, trying to push down the tears that sprang to his eyes at Sara's words. They could all see in his eyes that he knew she was right. He couldn't kill Slade because he felt it was his fault that the rage brought on by the mirakuru had destroyed his friend's humanity. Sara, likewise, would never be able to put an end to Slade's rampage for the very same reason. The League of Assassins really was a perfectly rational alternative, except for one thing.

"They'll want something in return," he told her quietly. "They just released you from your oath and allegiance. Tell me what you'll do if the price of their help is you returning to their ranks."

Sara breathed in a deep breath and ran her fingers through her hair. She turned away from Oliver, just so that she wouldn't have to look at him as she thought about it, but that ended up being the wrong move, as she was then face-to-face with Laurel instead. Her sister stared at her with big hazel eyes that were so much like their mother's; she was reminded of the night that Dinah Lance had pleaded with her not to join Oliver on the Queen's Gambit, that it would destroy her relationship with Laurel forever. Now Laurel was looking at her, with eyes pleading her not to leave her to rejoin The League of Assassins. She realized in that moment that if it had been Laurel begging her not to board the Queen's Gambit all those years ago, she wouldn't have got on the boat. Because, despite the love Sara had for her mother, Laurel had always been the one thing in her life that had mattered the most to her, and if she had been looking in her sister's eyes back then, as she was now, she would have realized her mistake before she'd even made it.

"I won't rejoin," Sara answered finally, turning to stare Oliver down again. "If it comes down to a choice between leaving my family or having to protect them myself, I'll choose them." She looked over her shoulder at Laurel. "Every single time."

"Then it's your call to make," Oliver conceded reluctantly. His picked up his bow and quiver and prepared to leave. "I just hope to hell that you know what you're doing."

Oliver left and as Digg passed Sara to follow him, he gave her a quick warning look and a slight nod. She took it as his very own version of a 'good luck'. Sara felt Laurel's hand on her shoulder and she reached her own hand up to hold it as she squeezed supportively.

"For what it's worth, I think you're really brave for doing this," Laurel told her quietly.

"Brave or stupid," Sara half-agreed, turning to face Laurel. "Either way, this is dangerous. I would tell you to leave town if it weren't for A.R.G.U.S. blocking all the exits to the city."

Laurel wrinkled her nose at Sara. "I wouldn't leave anyway," she admitted honestly.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Of course you wouldn't," she muttered, "because God forbid you actually take my advice and keep yourself out of harm's way for a change."

"Not my style," Laurel joked, pulling her little sister into a one-armed hug.

At that moment, Sara's phone began ringing. She pulled away from Laurel just enough to retrieve her phone from her pocket. She looked at the caller ID and then accepted the call.

"Dr. Hamilton," Sara greeted the man on the other end of the receiver. "How did you get this number?"

"It was given to me by our Miss Smoak, actually," the doctor answered. His smile was audible.

"You mean–"

"She's awake, Miss Lance," Dr. Hamilton informed her. "And she's asking for you."

"I'm on my way."

Sin was looking at Thea over Roy's sleeping form, or more specifically, Sin was looking at the vial of the improved mirakuru cure that Thea held between her thumb and forefinger. It was a strange neon blue color that Thea wouldn't ordinarily have trusted, but if its source was good enough for Felicity, then that was good enough for her. She ran her thumb across Roy's hairline absentmindedly and stared at his face, as if willing him to wake up on his own.

"At least they improved the cure for us without too much of a fight," Thea murmured lowly.

Her friend scoffed. "Yeah. Probably because you looked like you were five seconds away from tearing their heads off if they didn't do what you asked," Sin commented sarcastically. "Dude, I didn't know princesses could be so scary."

Thea looked up from Roy's face for the first time since they had arrived back at that Arrow Cave. "Do you think this one is going to work?" she asked. Her tone was even but Sin could see the worry and raw fear in her steel-blue eyes. "It didn't work the first time, and now Caitlin and Cisco are out of mirakuru to procure an antidote from."

"We watched them fix it, Thea. They were sure they got it right this time, no doubts about it," Sin reminded her gently. "It'll work this time. I can feel it." Thea maintained her worried and skeptical expression, so Sin knew she would need to be the one to take action, "Come on. Give me the vial. I'll give him the injection."

Thea sighed and handed it over and Sin grabbed one of Sara's syringes from a nearby table. She pulled the entire vial into the syringe and turned back to the pair. Thea was standing at Roy's head, her fingers in his short hair, staring down at his face like she was looking at a dying man.

"He hates shots and needles," Thea commented in general.

"I know, but he'll be glad he got this one," Sin said. She met Thea's eyes, "Ready?"

"No," Thea sighed, "but do it anyway."

Sin nodded and pulled a face as she inserted the needle into Roy's bicep and pushed the cure lever on the syringe. She looked more relieved after she pulled the needle out and threw it onto the steel medical tray she had gotten it from. Sin blew out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"Okay, now all we have to do is wait and pray," Sin told Thea.

Thea nodded. "Ollie and John should be back soon," she said. "Just in case . . ." she trailed off, unable to force the rest of that sentence out.

Sin's hand lighted atop hers and she met her dark eyes. "Hey, they're just coming back so they can welcome Roy back to the land of the living. No 'just in case's about it."

The faint smile Sin got in return was lackluster and halfhearted at best, but it was all Thea could bring herself to do, as she watched the man she loved fight to live.

Sara was four steps ahead of Laurel and gaining distance in the hospital hallway, when suddenly she stopped. Laurel, having been nearly jogging to keep up with her sister, ground to a halt just short of bowling Sara over. The blonde's posture had become rigid and she seemed rooted to where she stood. Laurel took a step around her to see that her face looked suddenly deeply troubled.

"Sara?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"I don't think I can go in there," Sara said.

Laurel's brow furrowed in confusion. "What? Why not?"

Blinking rapidly a few times, Sara met her sister's eyes dead-on. "What am I supposed to say to her?" she asked softly, her eyes shining with unexpected, unshed tears. "Slade's still at large, his army is still terrorizing the city, and now I've made up my mind to call the League of Assassins for help and Oliver's right– they're going to want me to return to Nanda Parbat with them."

The counselor's eyes grew worried. "But you said you wouldn't go back to them," Laurel reminded her with caution. She tried not to sound accusatory, but her internal silent alarms were blaring in her mind.

"I know, I know," Sara replied uneasily. When her blue eyes looked back up into her older sister's, Laurel saw the desperation and fear in them. "But people are dying, Laure. What if recommitting my allegiance to the League is the only way the city can be saved?" Realization flared in Sara's ice-blue irises, "That's it. That was Slade's plan all along."

"Okay, wait. Slow down," Laurel told her in a soothing voice. "You're not making any sense. Sara, what was Slade's plan?"

Sara grabbed her sister's hands in her own ferociously. There was a newly crazed glint in her stare. "Slade kidnapped Thea, he killed Moira Queen, he told you that Ollie was the Arrow, he tortured Felicity to what he believed was her death because she's the only member of the team that Ollie actively tries to keep protected," Sara listed off, counting the points on her fingers. "He knows that we can't stop him alone and he knows about my ties to the League, he knows that they might be the only ones who can stop him and put an end to his army's rampage, and he knows that Ra's al Ghul will want something in return."

"Sara–"

"Ra's didn't release me, Laurel. Nyssa did," Sara told her. "No one leaves the League alive. The last person who did was Malcolm Merlyn and he went insane and killed five-hundred-and-three people, including his own son, trying to destroy the borough of the city that his wife was killed in."

"I'm well aware of that, Sara," Laurel snapped, not appreciating the reminder of Tommy's death. "What's your point?"

Sara sighed and her whole body deflated for the first time since she had frozen in the middle of the hospital corridor. "My point is that I can save myself the roaming charges, because I don't have to call the League," she said, meeting Laurel's eyes. "They're already here."

She had told Laurel to go on ahead of her and stay at the hospital with Felicity, as it might be one of the only safe places left in the city. The safer both her sister and Felicity were, the better for Sara. Two less people she cared about being in danger.

Once she had slipped out of the hospital, Sara ducked down an alleyway and made her way into a courtyard. She counted four different escape routes, not including all the windows of the vacant brick buildings surrounding three-quarters of the urban edifice; the fire escape to the rooftop, the back door to a restaurant with a lock that Sara could break off with the metal pipe laying nearby, the sewer grate just in front of her, and the way she had come in. She bent down and picked up what looked like part of a broken wood railing, snapping it into two pieces against her knee and twirling them both in her hands.

"I have to hand it to you, it took me awhile to figure out you were here this time," Sara announced into the dark shadows of the back alley. "I know you're there, blending into the shadows like darkness itself, following my every move, watching me. If you're going to kill me, at least give me the courtesy of a fair fight. Or are you afraid that you trained me a little too well?"

Sara heard footsteps behind her and she dropped one of the wooden shivs beside her to withdraw a double-edged steel knife from her belt. She threw the blade toward the source of the noise with ferocity, and dropped to retrieve the shiv again all in one fluid motion. It only took a moment, the length of one breath, for a figure to step out of the shadows of the courtyard holding the shiv exactly as she had caught it in mid-air before her face. Sara sucked in a breath, unsure whether to be relieved or even more afraid.

"Nyssa," Sara said into the quiet darkness.

"Merheba, Ta-er al-Sahfer," Nyssa greeted her, pulling off her balaclava. "Did you only just realize you were being watched?" asked the assassin conversationally.

"I've been a little preoccupied," Sara returned, keeping a close eye on Nyssa for any movements, however miniscule they might be.

"So I've seen," Nyssa said, bowing her head in acceptance. There was almost a tone of care and sympathy in her voice, and in another life Sara would have been quick to accept that as the truth, but in light of recent events, she wasn't certain. "You should still be mindful of your surroundings, hubi."

"Nyssa–"

"Do you know why I am here, Ta-er al-Sahfer?" Nyssa interrupted brusquely.

Sara shrugged her shoulders, something she knew annoyed Nyssa to no end. "To kill me or to coerce my fealty once again," the blonde guessed in a tone that falsely implied she didn't care which.

Nyssa looked at her with a deepening expression of uncharacteristic emotion and hurt. "You must know me better than that by now, Ta-er al-Sahfer," she said with disappointment. Nyssa looked up and her dark eyes, filled with so many secrets and ghosts, met the blazing pain of Sara's own tortured blue orbs. "My father has not sent me to kill you, nor has he sent me to force your return and allegiance to us."

"Then why have you come?" Sara asked distrustfully.

As Nyssa took two steps forward, Sara countered with a half-step back. She wanted to trust that Nyssa's intentions were true. She wanted to believe that this woman who had once held Sara's heart with such care could only be here for pure reasons. The trouble was that Sara knew Nyssa perhaps better than Nyssa knew herself at times, and she knew that Nyssa was anything but pure and true and trustworthy; she had seen Nyssa double-cross and cross-off too many marks to not be suspicious and guarded now.

"You needed me, hayaati, and so I came," the dark-haired woman told her.

The look in Nyssa's eyes at that moment was the most sincere Sara could ever remember seeing her, and Sara found her walls gradually lowering despite her better judgment. She threw one of the wooden makeshift stakes aside, but kept the other one in her hand as a precaution. Nyssa nodded her acceptance of this small but adequate gesture, and when she walked toward Sara this time, Sara didn't step back. She held up her hand instead.

"If you truly are here to help, then I'm glad, but there are conditions," Sara told her warningly. "You are technically a fugitive of A.R.G.U.S. after all. First off, no killing innocents, no 'collateral damages', no loss is acceptable except for Slade and his men. Secondly, no kidnapping my family or friends. Third, no poisoning them either–"

Nyssa bristled uncomfortably. "Does a non-lethal injection of tetrodotoxin count as poisoning your friends?" she asked.

Something inside of Sara snapped in that instant. Without her even registering her own movements, Sara had slammed Nyssa against one of the brick buildings. "You poisoned Felicity?!" Sara gasped angrily.

"The dose wasn't intended to kill her! It was only meant to trick Wilson into believing her dead so he would leave her," Nyssa hissed back. "He never would have let her go alive!"

Sara released her hold on Nyssa and took a step back. The assassin was right, of course. Slade Wilson was not known for his mercifulness. In hindsight, Nyssa had probably actually saved Felicity, rather than tried to killed her.

"She saved your life, al-Sahfer," Nyssa said to Sara meaningfully. "Who was I not to save hers in return?"

Releasing a breath she hadn't known she had been holding and running her fingers through her hair, Sara tilted her head back to the night sky. "I'm sorry," Sara apologized in a murmur. "I've been on edge lately."

Nyssa only nodded. "How is she? Your friend, Felicity."

"She's alive, by nothing short of a small miracle," Sara answered grimly. "The doctors say she should have died from all the trauma she sustained, but she's a survivor."

"Birds of a feather," Nyssa commented with a sly smirk, looking at Sara. "My father called you the same thing when you were first brought back to Nanda Parbat. He said your survival made him believe that perhaps there was a God out there somewhere."

Sara smiled faintly. "How is he?" she asked, torn between wanting to know and not wanting to know simultaneously.

Nyssa grimaced tightly. "He is well, thank you," she replied, keeping it short and vague. For that much, Sara was grateful. "But we were on the subject of your friend, if I recall." Nyssa turned Sara to walk out of the courtyard, the two falling into step beside one another. "Have you spoken to her yet?"

"No. She woke up today, and I was on my way to see her when I realized Slade's intentions to force me to ask you here for help, expecting your price of my servitude in return," Sara explained. "Laurel is with her now."

"And your boyfriend?" Nyssa teased skeptically.

"Former-boyfriend." The blonde amended. "We split up. I left for awhile, but I couldn't bring myself to go very far. Felicity found me and brought me home.

"Right now Oliver and John Diggle are probably contending with another member of our team who was injected with the mirakuru serum. Some contacts of Felicity's were able to procure an antidote for the mirakuru serum, and he was tested with it this afternoon. Hopefully it worked."

"Is he capable of fighting without the strength caused by the serum?" Nyssa inquired.

"Not like the rest of us," Sara answered, "but he can take a hit and keep throwing them back. He's raw, scrappy, and he was strong before he was injected with the mirakuru."

Nyssa nodded once more with a contemplative expression. "We should begin our plan of attack tomorrow morning. For now, you should see to your friends," she reasoned, all-business once again.

Sara took Nyssa's hand in her grasp. "The clock tower of Heritage Hall," she began. "At dawn, you'll meet me there?"

"Naäam. I will be there," Nyssa promised. She touched Sara's hand that had grasped hers and leaned in slowly to place a kiss on Sara's cheek. Sara closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She heard Nyssa whisper, "Until then, Ta-er al-Sahfer."

When Sara reopened her eyes, she was standing alone on the street under the glow of the hospital lights, watching the chaos inflicted by Slade's men rage on around her still.