Awakening

Sara felt frightened at the thought of what she might find when she entered Felicity's hospital room. Each step she took down the hallway was slow and deliberate, as if at any moment she might turn around and flee. The thought of who she might meet when she looked into the face of her friend was unsettling. She had always known Felicity to be resilient, but even the most resilient people would suffer psychological scars after being put through what Felicity had. An experience like that could transform a person into someone else; Sara was walking proof of that.

A thousand scenarios ran through Sara's head, each more horrific and sobering than the last. Had Slade broken Felicity's spirit and mind as badly as he had broken her body? Would Felicity be bitter and resentful, angry and vengeful, or a catatonic shell of the person Sara knew? She wanted to believe that Slade could never have extinguished the light that burned so brightly inside of Felicity, the one that incited in her a dire craving to be close to Felicity that Sara felt in some deep, long untouched part of her soul.

In a small, subjugated compartment at the back of her mind, Sara knew what she was feeling. She had felt it before, but never to this extreme. She refused to acknowledge, even to herself, that this feeling existed inside of her. She had traded in her heart for the strength and will to survive a long time ago. There was nothing left in her to give to someone else, especially not someone as whole and pure as Felicity. Sara would do whatever it took to ensure that Felicity remained that way, if she still was.

The sound of laughter coming from the door of Felicity's room gave Sara some relief as she approached. When she turned and looked inside, she found Laurel sitting in the chair beside Felicity's bed, laughing at something their friend at said. For a moment, Sara elected to just lean in the doorway and take in the scene.

Felicity was looking better now, with more color in her cheeks and yellowing bruises on her face. She looked less like a corpse and more like the energetic woman they all knew and loved. Seeing her this way made the panicked clenching in her heart loosen some, allowing her to breathe a little more freely.

By chance, the woman in the hospital bed happened to glance toward the door and her eyes met Sara's gaze. The clenching tightened once again when Sara recognized the haunted look in Felicity's pale blue eyes. She knew that look; she had seen it in the eyes of the men Ivo experimented on and in the eyes of the assassins she had met in the League. It was a change so small that other people would not even notice it, but Sara was not 'other people'.

"Hi," Felicity croaked. Her voice was still hoarse and rough, and Sara's eyes shifted involuntarily to the contusions around Felicity's neck.

Sara tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. "Hey," she replied, shuffling further into the room. She wasn't sure where to stand or what to say or even how to posture herself, and she felt awkward for the first time in forever.

Laurel looked between the two of them for a moment, and then she set her hand over Felicity's and squeezed it in friendly affection. "I'm gonna go get something hot and caffeinated," she told Felicity while standing. "Anything you want me to smuggle in for you? Coffee? Chocolate? A taser?"

Felicity laughed a real, genuine laugh. "Only in this wacky, crime-fighting, fully dysfunctional family would that be a legitimate question," the blonde techie remarked. "No. Unless you can score me a secure wireless router and a tablet, or some really good morphine, I think I'm all set."

"Okay," Laurel laughed. "I'll see what I can do."

She stood and moved past her sister, but as she was passing, Sara told her, "Don't leave the hospital, okay? It's after dark and Slade's men are on the war path again."

Laurel mock-saluted Sara as she walked backwards down the corridor. "Whatever you say, little sister." The older Lance turned her back and strode down the hallway in her ever confident and purposeful gait.

Sara's eyes shifted from her sister's retreating form to the battered blonde woman sitting up in her hospital bed. She deliberated for a moment. She wasn't sure if she should move closer and maintain her distance.

"You can come sit down," Felicity told her after an awkward moment. She smiled a tired, faint smile as she added jokingly, "I won't bite, you know."

Relief flooded through Sara's body and she moved further into the room and took a seat in the chair that Laurel had just vacated. She reached her hand forward, as if to take Felicity's hand that way that Laurel had, but she hesitated. Felicity, however, stretched her own arm out and wrapped her fingers around Sara's and the remaining tension in Sara's body deflated slowly.

"It is really good to have you back, Fliss," Sara told her earnestly, meeting her eyes. "I was worried about you."

Felicity smiled and smoothed her thumb over the back of Sara's hand in a soothing motion. "Laurel told me that you already know Nyssa al Ghul is here," Felicity said conversationally, her eyes transfixed on the patterns her thumb was tracing on Sara's metacarpals. "Well, actually, she said 'The League of Assassins', but I knew it was probably Nyssa that you met with. The League would probably want to lead in with your alluring, dangerous, and sexy former-lover, I would think." Felicity's eyes widened. "Not that I think she's sexy, and not that I don't think she's sexy– I, um, I . . . What I meant was that you probably think she's sexy and, you know, dangerous and alluring and all that. Um– Well, in any case, she gave me this shot of something and it made Slade think I was dead so I guess she kind of saved my life, and now I'm done talking."

Sara laughed out loud. It was the kind of laugh she hadn't used in years and it surprised her that she even remembered how to laugh like that. She was happy to know that she still could.

"Yup, you're still cute," Sara told her. She leaned over to quickly kiss Felicity's temple. "You have no idea how relieved I am to know that."

Felicity scoffed. "Yeah," she mumbled sarcastically, "I bet I look real 'cute' right now."

"Actually, you look like a badass," Sara told her honestly. "It's kind of hot." The last part was a slip-up, but Sara composed herself and produced a devilish grin before Felicity could catch onto that. At least it wasn't a lie.

Blue bug-eyes looked back at Sara. "Well, uh . . . thanks, I think," Felicity replied. "Do you think I'll have scars?"

A solemn feeling settled over the Canary. "Do you?" she countered, just the slightest hint of worry creeping into her tone.

The expression on Felicity's face changed from one of mirth to one of brooding. "Yes," she answered, trying to swallow past the lump in her throat. "But I think they'll heal, just like the rest of me."

They fell into silence for awhile, and they would have been lying if they had said it was a comfortable one. Finally, Felicity spoke again, "It was weird being under the effects of . . . whatever-it-was-your-crazy-assassin-ex-gave-me. It was like an out of body experience. I could hear everything that was going on around me, but I couldn't move or say anything back." Sara's hand tighten in Felicity's grip.
"I heard you. When we were in the ambulance, I heard you. I tried to move like you asked me to, but I couldn't. I wanted to let you know that I was still with you. I'm still with you," Felicity promised, pulling their joined hands to her chest where Sara could feel her heart beating. "Everything was dark where I was – and part of me was glad because, you know, everyone always talks about seeing a light when they're about to die? – but then you started telling me to fight because all of you needed me. It gave me strength, Sara. You made me fight to come back so that I could tell you this:
"When I went to Park City to convince you to come home, I promised you that I would help you find your way back to the light that's still inside you. Two days ago, I was dying and I was in so much pain that I wanted to die, but then you spoke to me and you gave me back my will to survive." Felicity looked up at her with glimmering eyes full of tears. "You saved me, Sara. Thank you."

Sara sat speechless for a moment, and then she felt all her restraint slip away from her. She launched herself out of her seat and she threw her arms around Felicity, still keeping mind of her injuries. She didn't care how out of character she was acting, it didn't even matter to her anymore. She cried. Sara cried and she held Felicity and Felicity held her back, and for a long time they stayed that way.

. . .

Sara was awoken a short time later by a hand on her back and she shook off her sleep and looked up to find her sister holding out a cup of coffee to her. She glanced quickly to Felicity, seeing her still sleeping in relative peace. She took the coffee from her sister's hands and took a sip.

"Thanks," she gasped after taking a sip of the scalding beverage. She met her sister's eyes and her expression softened. "Seriously though, Laur. Thank you . . . for everything."

Laurel bent over and hugged Sara to her side, dropping a kiss onto her little sister's head. "That's what I'm here for, Sare Bear," she told her, as Sara relaxed into her sister's comforting embrace. "We missed out on six years of each others' lives. I just want to be here for you for the rest of them."

Sara nodded her head where it was nestled against her sister's stomach, but she didn't say anything. She wanted to tell Laurel that she was the reason Sara had fought so hard to stay alive on the freighter and on the island and eventually in the League. She wanted to tell her sister that she didn't know how all of this was going to turn out, but she was sure that Laurel was the most important person in her live, aside from their father, and that she would always fight for her. She wanted to talk to Laurel about her conflicting feelings in light of Nyssa al Ghul's recent return to Starling City in its darkest hour, and about her startling revelation concerning their team and the adversaries and Felicity. There were a million things Sara wanted to say to Laurel, but she couldn't find a way to voice any of them, and she didn't know that they had the time for her to explain anyway.

"I really love you," she said in lieu of all the million thoughts pinging through her mind. "No matter what happens, Laurel, I want you to know that I love you and I'm sorry for getting on the Queen's Gambit six years ago. I would do anything to take it back."

She felt Laurel's fingers thread through her hair in response. "I forgave you for that a long time ago," Laurel said softly. "After awhile, it just didn't feel right holding onto that anger when I thought I'd lost you forever. I didn't want to remember you that way. I just wanted to remember you as my towheaded baby sister; jumping on the trampoline the backyard with me, wearing a towel tied around your neck like a cape, with a popsicle stain on your face, and grinning with your two front teeth both missing; scaling the tree outside my bedroom window to sneak back into the house way after midnight and just collapsing in bed with me because you were too tired to take ten steps across the hall to get to yours, stealing my favorite shirt and wearing it to Michael Kovski's party where it was ruined because you pissed off Tori Blake and she threw her cup of spiked fruit punch on you; dancing into my room in your underwear singing the Backstreet Boys into a hairbrush to cheer me up when I was upset, and always covering for me with mom and dad when I went out with Tommy and Oliver to go somewhere dad wouldn't approve of."

Sara smiled at the memories as Laurel remembered them aloud. It felt like she was describing a different person, in a different life, and yet Sara felt the remnants of that wild and rebellious child still alive inside of her sometimes. Under all the scars and burns and darkness that covered her heart and soul, Sara was beginning to understand that she was still that same girl that her sister chose to remember her as.

She looked up to her older sister again. "Promise me one thing?" she requested. "Promise me that, no matter what happens from here on out, you'll remember me as that girl."

Laurel looked as if Sara's request shocked her. "You are that girl, Sara," Laurel told her. "To me, you will always be that girl. That mask you wear . . . it doesn't make you a different person, it just makes you more of the person I've always known you to be; brave, strong, determined, compassionate . . . That's who you are, Sara. At heart, that's who you always will be."

And Laurel was right, of course.

She was still a daughter, a sister, and a friend underneath it all. She felt the strength that came from knowing that no one would ever be able to take that from her pounding through her veins. People could change her all they wanted, but they couldn't take from her the person she had once been; the person that she still was, underneath it all.

That was the light that Felicity saw was still inside of her, and that was how she was going to light these guys up.

The blonde stood to her feet, clearly startling her sister. "Laurel, I think I might have a plan, but I'm not sure you're going to like it."

"So what else is new," Laurel drawled flatly.

If daybreak hadn't have come when it did, Oliver wasn't sure he would have survived.

Oliver was tired of fighting Slade's mirakuru soldiers with one hand tied behind his back. Even with the full support of the SCPD behind him, he knew he was fighting a losing battle. They need Roy. They needed Sara. They needed anyone else who could possibly put a dent in these guys and live to tell someone about it.

The irony of them needing a literal miracle to stop men induced with a drug named 'miracle' was not lost on Oliver, nor was it lost on Diggle, who was in just as bad shape as his boss.

"We're fighting super-powered soldiers," Oliver said aloud.

"Brilliant observation, Ollie," Thea snapped in his direction, looking up briefly from Roy's recovering body to send a deadly glare at her older brother. "Next you're going to tell me that the sky is blue."

Oliver had to stop himself from snapping back at her like they were children again. "What I meant," he continued through gritted teeth, "is that we need help, and, at this point, I don't even care where it comes from anymore."

They heard footsteps coming down the stairs and turned to see Digg walking down with Laurel. "Well that's good," Diggle told him, "because Lyla just called me. A.R.G.U.S. is going to level the city in forty-eight hours if we don't get a handle on this." He walked up to Oliver with a little less confidence than usual. "You and I can't get close enough to inject Slade or to kill him, but we know someone who can, and Lyla says he's willing to cooperate with us, if we take the chance on him."

The Arrow lifted his chin. "First Sara with her brilliant plan of calling the League of Assassins! Now you want to unleash Deadshot?!" Oliver exclaimed. "Has everyone I know gone crazy?!"

"You said you didn't care where the help came from anymore, Oliver," Laurel reminded him. She stepped up to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. "You can't fight Slade Wilson alone, Ollie. Even with John and Sara and Felicity – who clearly can't help us much right now – Wilson's men outnumber and overpower you." Her big, hazel eyes looked up into his and he saw a sort of stubborn bravery and determination masking the fear in them. "You have to accept the help where you can get it, otherwise Amanda Waller is going to bomb Starling City, if Wilson's men don't beat her to it. Lyla has the Suicide Squad on stand-by and the League of Assassins is already in Starling City. Take the help, Oliver. It's the only choice we have right now."

The sound of a sharp inhale, coupled with Thea's surprised shriek, drew everyone's attention over to Roy, who had bolted upright suddenly. Oliver rushed over with Digg just a step behind him, and gently moved his sister out of the way. He looked carefully at Roy, while fingering a fletchette behind his back as a precaution.

"Roy?" he asked reluctantly.

The younger man looked around wildly, his eyes searching every inch of the room. "What the hell happened?" he demanded in shock. "And where the hell am I?"

Oliver smiled at Diggle and threw the fletchette into the wall opposite them without looking away from his protégé. "Good to have you back, Harper," Oliver told him, clapping him on the shoulder. "You were pretty out of it there for awhile, but the mirakuru is out of your system now."

"How–?" Roy gaped.

Thea broke back into the circle the team had formed around Roy. "Felicity. She gave a pair of scientists from S.T.A.R. Labs the last vial of mirakuru and they derived a cure from it," she explained. "Of course, the first attempt was less than effective, so Sin and I had to track them down and coerce them to try again–"

"Actually," Sin broke in loudly from the other side of the room, "Princess here asked them how long they thought they could live after she took their heads off!" She jumped off her perch on Oliver's workbench and swaggered over to Roy. Sin drew her fist back and punched Roy as hard as she could.

Roy's eyes widened. "Ow, Sin!" he yelled at her, rubbing his arm where she had punched him. If it were possible, his eyes widened a little more. "That actually hurt," he realized out loud, looking around at the others.

"Yeah, just checking," Sin scoffed offhandedly.

The previously-superstrong boy whipped his head back around to Thea and Sin's direction. "Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute! Sin?! Thea?!" he demanded. His head snapped back to Oliver, "You told them?"

"Technically speaking, Sara told me and then I told Thea," Sin explained. "But hey! It's nice to see you too, Abercrombie! Don't worry! It wasn't like we've been worried out of our heads over you or anything!" she intoned sarcastically.

Roy groaned and put his head in his hands. He felt dizzy from all the new information that was being forced on him, but there had to be a reason that Oliver had allowed his younger sister to get pulled into all of this and he had a feeling that it wasn't him. Clearly, being brought up to speed right now was a necessity, not a choice made willingly.

He felt a soft hand land on his bare shoulder, followed by the sound of Thea's reassuring voice as she asked, "Roy?" He looked up to see that everyone had mostly dispersed but Thea was still sitting next to him, her clear blue eyes boring into his. "Are you alright?"

"Y-yeah," he sputtered. "I mean, I feel fine. It just feels like I missed a lot."

Thea's eyes teared over and she struggled to stifle a sob. "Yeah, you did," she told him, shuddering under the stress of trying to hold herself together. "But you're here now, and there's a lot going on right now too. Slade Wilson made a bunch of mirakuru soldiers out of your blood and now he's been leading them through a tear across the city. There have been hundreds of deaths. It's like the Undertaking all over again."

With a single nod, Roy jumped off the metal slab he had been resting on for weeks now, and he began stretching out his limbs and working the kinks from his muscles. "Then we have to stop them," he declared loudly enough that everyone could hear.

"We have doses of the same serum that cured you. We need to get them into injection arrows, darts, anything that could deliver the cure to Slade's men without getting too close," Oliver instructed. He turned to Laurel, "If Digg and Lyla can get a secure internet router set up close to Felicity's hospital room, do you think she's well enough to hack into the camera footage around the city and be our eyes and ears?"

Laurel looked a little certain. "She can barely move most of her upper-body right now, but Sara thinks she might have an idea for how to remedy that," she explained. "Something about a serum that can accelerate the healing process. I'm not sure. She used a lot of medical terminology that I didn't even know she knew, but she sounded pretty sure of herself."

Oliver's expression grew steely and unreadable, like he was remembering something from a time in his life that he would rather forget. "She is. Ivo used it on the men he experimented on while Sara was on the freighter. It was a failed attempt to recreate the mirakuru serum, but it worked as a catalyst for hyper-regeneration," Oliver explained.

"Meaning?" Roy questioned as he gathered every empty injection arrow he could find and passed them to Thea and Sin.

"Meaning it temporarily gives the patient an even more accelerated healing process than the people injected with the mirakuru have," Oliver reiterated.

"Then why isn't it used more? A drug like that . . . mass produced, it could save countless lives," Digg said, walking around the makeshift table.

"Because the only people who knew how to replicate it were dead. Or, at least, believed to be dead," Oliver answered. "Ivo and Sara. She's now the only person in the world who knows how to recreate the hyper-healing serum, but there's another reason. Taking it? It's unbelievably painful to heal at that kind of rate, sometimes even more painful than the injuries themselves."

Laurel nodded. "Which is why she's going to sedate Felicity beforehand," she explained. "She doesn't know if there's any sedative strong enough to keep Felicity under while she's going through the healing process, but she's willing to try. And so is Felicity."

Oliver sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Diggle, get Lyla and get a wireless connection to Felicity's ward? Laurel, when Sara's done, have her find her assassin pals and meet us back at the foundry. I don't know what's left of it, but it doesn't matter right now," he said. "Digg, after you're done, you can bring the Suicide Squad there as well. Roy, you're with me."

As everyone else began moving, Thea quickly followed after her brother and Roy. "I'm coming with you too, Ollie!"

"Absolutely not," Oliver said, spinning around on his feet. "Speedy, it's too dangerous. I don't want you in the middle of this."

"Well I am in the middle of this, whether you want me here or not!" Thea yelled.

"Thea, you don't even know how to defend yourself out there!" Oliver yelled back at her.

Seeing her brother's words as a challenge rather than a put down, Thea turned and picked up one of Oliver's spare lightweight dual compound bows and a steel-tipped arrow. In a single fluid motion, Thea had nocked the arrow, pulled the bowstring back, and fired at one of the targets. The arrow made a satisfying sound as it embedded itself into the heart of the bulls-eye.

She turned back to her brother and lifted an eyebrow as if to say 'see?'. "Four-year reigning archery champion of Camp Occowa," Thea said smugly. "Remember? I knew how to fire an arrow before you even learned how to hold a bow, Ollie. That" – she pointed to the dead-eye arrow – "is how well I can shoot after a nine-year hiatus. Now tell me I can't defend myself out there." She glared at Oliver long and hard, knowing that she could beat him in a war of wills any day of the week.

"Fine," Oliver ground out eventually. "But you stay close to Roy and me. Got it? And bring that bow with you. You're going to need it." He looked around, "Sin?"

Sin held up her hands in acquiescence. "Hey, I'm good with staying put," she said. "The last time I tried out Sara's staff-thingy, I almost gave myself a concussion so, you know, you guys go have fun!"

"At least let me bring you to the hospital," Laurel suggested. "You can help Felicity and I. That way you're not alone down here."

Sin looked around the darkened and creepy basement lair, then back to Laurel. "Good idea! I'll follow you!" she agreed readily.

Laurel smiled a tiny, affectionate smile and held her arm out to the girl, wrapping it over Sin's shoulders once she was within reach.

As scared as she was about the prospect of bringing Nyssa al Ghul and Oliver Queen in to work together, Sara was more afraid of any adverse affects the hyper-regeneration serum might have on Felicity. She hated her plan; it was risky and brutal, and she hated that she was going to be the one furthering Felicity's suffering. Unfortunately, it was also necessary.

"You should try to relax," Felicity told her. She couldn't see what Sara was doing with the array of ingredients Laurel and Sin had brought her and the ones she had nicked from the hospital itself, but Sara's body looked so tense that a single touch could shatter her like glass. "I'm the one taking this stuff, and I'm going to be fine. No pain, no gain, right?"

Sara turned back around, but she didn't meet Felicity's eyes just yet, instead she looked at Laurel and Sin. "It's done, now I just need to boil and strain it. This would be so much easier if I were someplace with basic lab equipment," she sighed.

Sin looked thoughtful and then her face lit up. "S.T.A.R. Labs is, like, six blocks from here," she said. "I bet our friends, Drs. Snow and Ramon, would help us if we asked really nicely." She looked sideways at Laurel, "What do you say, Counselor? Wanna meet a couple geniuses?"

"Sure," Laurel agreed as Sara capped a lid on the tin container and handed it to Sin. She met her sister's eyes, "We'll be back soon. Do what you have to do."

Sara nodded and watched her sisters disappear from the room, then she turned back to Felicity and reclaimed the chair beside her friend's bed. Her hand fell over Felicity's finger and she clutched them tightly. "You're going to be okay," Sara told Felicity.

The IT girl quirked an eyebrow and a half-smile. "Are you trying to convince me? Or yourself?" she asked keenly. Her gaze softened and she lifted her arm with a wince to trace Sara's furrowed brow. "Hey. Sara, I trust you. Okay? I trust you. I really am going to be fine. You'll knock me out, you'll give me the super-healing serum, and I'll wake up right as rain by go-time."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Felicity. This serum is going to hurt like hell going through your system. It's going to feel like every cell in your body is moving too fast, multiplying too quickly, carrying too much. The adrenaline pumping through you might negate the sedative altogether," she warned. "You're going to be in an enormous amount of pain, and I really don't want to do that to you."

Felicity's hand covered the one that Sara had laid atop her other. She looked her in the eyes solemnly. "There is no one I trust more with this than you," she stated plainly. "I've been through twenty hours of torture at the hands of a delusional sadist. I'm stronger for it. I'm better than I was before. I can handle whatever this serum deals out to me, and whatever happens, it's not your fault, Sara. None of this is."

The tears that slipped down Sara's cheeks felt wrong and foreign to her still, after spending years maintaining an aloof composure, but she let them fall as she looked as Felicity. "You'll keep fighting, right? Promise me you'll keep fighting," Sara begged her.

A soft smile stretched across Felicity's features as her fingers slipped into Sara's blonde hair. "I will keep fighting. I will not stop," she promised. "Now, you promise me something."

Sara nodded. "Anything."

"Promise me you won't leave without saying goodbye, after the battle," Felicity told her. Sara opened her mouth with a denial stuck in her throat, but Felicity beat her to it. "You and I both know that Nyssa al Ghul didn't come to Starling City out of the goodness of her heart. I don't know what she wants, but there's something. So, if you can help it, Sara, don't leave without saying goodbye this time. At least to me."

Sara wasn't sure what to say to that.