– Resurgence –

"God, I hate this!" Sara whisper-screamed to Laurel and Sin as Sin handed her the vial of the healing serum. "This is going to suck for her," she said, "and I should be here with her while she's going through it."

Laurel put her arm around Sara's shoulders and pulled her close. "I know, but the others need you out there, Sara," she reminded her little sister gently. "I promise you, I will look after Felicity with my life, but Oliver clearly doesn't play well with the League of Assassins or the Suicide Squad. The city needs The Canary. That's who you have to be right now."

Sara could see the sincerity in Laurel's eyes, but it didn't make her feel any better. "Right. Because my early morning meeting with Nyssa went so well," she pointed out sarcastically, remembering back to early this morning.

. . .

Sara had left the hospital when the sky began getting lighter, but the sun had not quite begun to break out over the skyline. Before leaving, she had changed into her dark jeans, gray hoodie and leather jacket, and as she dismounted her motorcycle outside Heritage Hall and took her helmet off, she took a leaf from Oliver and Roy's books and kept her hood pulled up over her head. It wasn't yet daylight out and Slade's men might have still been finishing up their nightly razing of the city. She ducked into the building and silently made her way up to the clock tower.

She had found Nyssa waiting for her, the first rays of morning sun painting her face as she stood by the giant clock-face window. Even though Sara had made no sound as she moved, Nyssa had instinctually turned to look at her. The assassin had kept quiet until Sara was standing beside her, basking in the light.

"I was beginning to think you would not show, Ta-er al-Safher," Nyssa said lowly, a hint of amusement playing through her tones.

"It took me a little longer to get away from the hospital," Sara had explained unapologetically, staring straight ahead instead of looking at Nyssa.

"You've been spending a great deal of time there, I've seen," Nyssa commented. "Are you this concerned over all of your associates here in Starling City?"

Sara finally glared sideways at the raven-haired enigma. "Did you come here to talk to me about my relationships with my team members? Or about the imminent threat to the city? I get the feeling that your associates would rather discuss why they've come all this way, since we're clearly not alone."

At finding that there was no longer a need to remain in the shadows, several men in robes and balaclavas stepped forth. Their faces were shrouded by their hoods, so Sara could only see their eyes, but she thought she might recognize a few of them. She nodded to the few men she knew for certain.

Nyssa smirked mischievously. "Do you mean to tell me that you truly came alone yourself, Ta-er al-Safher?" Nyssa questioned skeptically.

"As a matter of fact, I did," Sara answered, unmoved by the League's show of numbers. She would have expected nothing less from a cell of trained assassins. Fortunately, she knew all their tricks. "You're not going to hurt me, Nyssa," she declared boldly, "and neither will your men."

"And what makes you so sure?" Nyssa challenged.

Sara pulled a taunting smile. "You and I both know that, whether or not my allegiance lays with the League, I'm worth more to your father alive than I am dead. That's why he never sent you or al-Owal or anyone else to kill me, only to bring me back to Nanda Parbat. Sworn under him or not, I still owe him a debt, and I am still a woman of my word. He won't kill me until that debt is paid in full.

Nyssa pursed her lips. "No, he will not," she agreed.

"And besides that" - Sara leaned in closer to Nyssa and lowered her voice so they wouldn't be heard by the others - "I once offered you the opportunity to kill me, the last time you came to this city, and you couldn't do it." She looked Nyssa in the eyes as she concluded, "You and I both know that I'm a lot harder to kill when I'm unwilling to die. You're no more likely to try to hurt me than I would be to hurt you, Nyssa."

The assassin bristled, as if shaking off the resentment she felt so that she could remain emotionless as always. "Do your friends have a plan?" Nyssa asked.

"We have some other old . . . allies . . joining us in battle. Tonight. We'll meet at the old foundry to go over our plan of attack," Sara told her. "I trust you know where that is."

Nyssa inclined her head ever so slightly. "I do."

"Good. At sunset then," Sara told her, turning to leave. She got almost to the staircase before Nyssa spoke to her.

"Is she really what you want, Ta-er al-Safher?" called Nyssa.

Sara stopped abruptly and her body tensed for a fight. Nyssa followed her, stepping behind her and running a hand across her shoulders as she stepped face-to-face with Sara. In her eyes, all Sara could see was a sort of amused skepticism.

"Someone so ordinary?" Nyssa continued to question her. "So helpless? Always falling into harm's way with no means to defend herself or escape, just like all the other people of this city that you play hero to? I know who you are, Ta-er al-Safher. You will never be able to leave this life, and she will never be safe living in it. As long as you care for her, you will never know peace."

"You're wrong," Sara told her. "She's not ordinary, she's remarkable, and she's not helpless, she's selfless. She knows nothing about battle but she fights anyway, because she believes in what she's fighting for. And I do know peace. I know it every time she looks at me."

. . .

"Hey," Laurel said to her, grabbing Sara's shoulders to regain her gaze and her undivided attention, "you just go out there and do your vigilante-thing, and Sin and I will get Felicity back to doing her IT 'Big Sister-is-watching'-thing, and pretty soon this will all be over. Okay? Dad and the rest of the SCPD are already corralling Slade's men. He says it will be like shooting fish in a barrel for you guys."

Sara smiled weakly. "Sure," she murmured, "like shooting well-trained, super-powered killer fish in a powder keg barrel." She peered back into the room where Sin was sitting next to Felicity, and she felt a pang in her heart. "How hard could it be?"

Felicity looked on worriedly as Sara as she prepared the syringes of the hyper-healing drug and the sedative. "You look like you're going to puke," she commented. "You should probably take a breath before you pass out, you know."

Reflexively, Sara seemed to inhale upon Felicity's command. "I'd just feel a lot better if we weren't doing this in a hospital full of real doctors, especially your attending, who is suspicious of me enough as it is," she prattled on, until Felicity touched her wrist lightly, silencing her panicked monologue.

Their eyes met intensely again as Felicity told her, "I trust you, remember? And Laurel and Sin are standing guard right outside the door, and Dr. Hamilton just made his rounds ten minutes ago. Stop thinking about it. Just do it. Everything is going to be okay."

For the first time since meeting one another, Felicity realized that Sara looked well and truly horrified. She had seen Sara scared over her family's safety countless times, frightened of her own residual killer's instincts, worried for Oliver and for Felicity herself, but this time it was different. It was like Felicity was looking at a different person, like a younger and more innocent version of Sara Lance.

She met the scared look in Sara's blue-green gaze with reassurance in her own. "Everything is going to be okay," Felicity repeated, rubbing her thumb over Sara's shaking elbow. "I'm going to be okay, and so are you. Everything is going to be okay, Sara."

"What if it isn't?" Sara questioned. Her voice wavered for the first time that Felicity could ever remember as she gave voice to the thought that had been plaguing her darkest throughts for days now.

After biting her bottom lip in thought for a moment, an idea flashed across Felicity's mind and she held out her palm. "Give me your hand," she told Sara. The other blonde obliged without question or hesitation, proving that she trusted Felicity implicitly.

Felicity lifted Sara's hand to her chest and placed it directly over her heart, which began rapidly beating at Sara's touch. "Feel that?" She paused and held Sara's soft stare for another moment. "You will still be able to feel it when you get back from saving the world, okay? You'll hear my voice in your ear while you're out there battling mirakuru monsters in two hours or less." She saw the determined spark beginning to flame back into life in Sara's eyes and she smiled slowly. "I'm with you, Sara. I'll be with you the whole time. I won't let you be alone out there. I have your back." Felicity quirked another smile. "After all, I don't take bullets for just anyone."

Sara laughed but stared at Felicity in awe. "How do you do that?" she inquired breathlessly.

"Do what?" Felicity questioned.

"How do you always know what to say to get through to us?" Sara clarified. "To me, to Oliver, to Digg, to Roy, even to my father. You always know how to reach us when we go to our darkest places."

Felicity shrugged, and grimaced a little at the pain it caused her. "It's my superpower," she answered simply. "The hacking is really just a cover for my true talent," she added in jest.
"Everyone needs a little saving now and then, even former-assassins-turned-masked-kickass-vigilante types."

Despite the pain it caused her, Felicity lifted her arm and cupped Sara's face in one hand. "Come here," she told Sara, guiding the girl down to her.

Sara lowered herself, and when she did, she felt Felicity's arms slip around her neck. Sara's arms wound themselves carefully around Felicity's torso, still mindful of the injuries that she was hoping against hope would no longer be existent an hour from now. Even with an embrace so loose, Sara still felt comforted by the gesture and the sensation of Felicity's arms wrapped around her. It made her feel safer, stronger, and braver, as if Felicity was passing along a little of her own unique brand of heroism into Sara through their contact. When Felicity's grip loosened, Sara held on for a moment longer, before stepping away once more and returning her eyes to Felicity's gaze.

"Now, here's what you're going to do," Felicity instructed. "You're going to knock me out with that sedative, you're going to hit me with your super-healing-serum, and then you're going to go make sure Nyssa al Ghul and Oliver, and Floyd Lawton and Digg don't all kill each other before they take down Slade."

Sara nodded more determinedly now. "Okay, but if I don't hear your voice on the comms in ninety minutes, I'm aborting the mission and running straight back here, got it?"

Felicity smiled, nodded, and laid back against the pillows assuredly. "I would expect nothing less from my white-wigged savior," she quipped.

Sara took a deep breath and injected Felicity with the sedative, followed a few minutes later by the hyper-healer. Then she stood, bent to kiss an unconscious Felicity's forehead, and left the room. On her way out the door, she nodded to her sister and then proceeded down the hallway with squared shoulders and a gait that meant she was ready for a fight.

As Roy loaded injection arrows into his own quiver, Oliver watched him carefully and, he noticed, so did Thea. For all the time he had spent in a state of mirakuru-powered rage or viper venom-induced coma, Roy now seemed to be mostly back to himself. His eyes were dark and he looked like he could use some natural sleep and maybe a Big Belly Burger (or five), but otherwise he was just fine. He almost made it look easy, but Oliver didn't have much hope of it being that way for the others, especially Slade.

"How are you feeling?" Oliver asked him cautiously.

Roy grinned impishly. "Only a little bit better than when you asked me the same thing half an hour ago," he answered smartly. "Honestly, I just want a little payback and for all of this to be over. I think I'm ready to get back to slapping bowls of water and stopping simple armed robbers, street thugs, and potential rapists."

Oliver couldn't help but smile. "You and me both," he agreed. "Although I think we've moved past slapping water. Maybe we'll work on actual hand-to-hand sparring now that I know you won't actually break me in half if you get mad."

"Oh please," Thea scoffed, coming up to the two of them with another armful of gathered arrows. She looked between her brother and the boy she loved and said, "You two just want an excuse to beat the crap out of each other and call it 'training'."

The men looked at each other and shrugged concessively.
"Yeah, a little."
"Maybe."

Thea rolled her eyes and muttered, "Boys." She continued to look around the foundry and then glared at her brother. "I still can't believe you were hiding a vigilante lair under my club without me knowing!" she snapped indignantly. "I mean, how did I miss all of this? You would think I would notice a green-hooded figure running up and down my basement stairs multiple times every night."

"Actually we used the old service tunnels under the building," Roy told her. "There's actually several secret passageways into and out of the foundry. Felicity says it used to be some kind of speak-easy back in the twenties or something like that."

"And technically it was still my club," Oliver reminded her offhandedly. "And, getting back on-point, you're going to need to learn how to fight too, Speedy," Oliver told her. "That is, if you want to keep being a part of things. You need to know how to defend yourself when you don't have a bow in your hands."

"Mom had me take karate for, like, five years," Thea said, her eyes flickered with grief for a moment, before she shoved down her emotions again. "I know how to defend myself."

"And Roy knows street fighting tactics," Oliver countered. "It doesn't mean either of you are trained and disciplined enough to take on hardened criminals."

"Did somebody mention criminals?" said an unfortunately familiar voice from the foundry's entrance.

Oliver looked up and saw Digg and Lyla leading down a trio of men and a woman, all of whom he remembered sending away to Iron Heights at one point or another. The one who had spoken was the most familiar to all of them, Floyd Lawton a.k.a "Deadshot". Following him were Benjamin Turner a.k.a. "Bronze Tiger", Chien Na Wei, a.k.a "White China", and Dudley Soames a.k.a. "Torque".

As the mercenaries came down the steps, both Oliver and Roy took subconscious steps in front of Thea. Under normal circumstances, Thea may have been annoyed and indignant about their patronizing protectiveness, but since she had seen most of these faces make Starling City News headlines as wanted dangerous criminals, she was willing to swallow her pride for the time being. She didn't like how this so-called 'Suicide Squad' was shaping up.

"Turner, Soames," Oliver greeted two of the men, who both nodded to him menacingly. He turned to the white-haired woman. "Chien Na Wei. I didn't know you'd joined up," he commented conversationally.

She sneered at him. "Call it being drafted," she returned in a deadly purr. The drug thief cut her eyes in Lyla's direction as she explained, "I wasn't given much of a choice, if I ever want to see life outside the walls of a federal penitentiary again. Although, if I get the opportunity to take your head off, Hood, I think I'll take my chances with a triple-life sentence."

Seeming nonplussed by the woman's blatant threat, Oliver refocused his attention on the obvious unofficial frontman of this deadly three-ring circus that Amanda Waller evidently called a task force. Floyd Lawton pretended to tip his imaginary hat to Oliver. The gesture was obviously mocking, but the man still seemed to hold less resentment and ill-wishing for Oliver than his grudging colleagues. Lawton was many things, but he was not dishonest or underhanded; he owned and admitted to his dark deeds, however unremorseful he might be about them.

"Lawton," Oliver said in lieu of an actual greeting. "Thanks for agreeing to this. We could use all the help we can get."

Lawton chuckled darkly. "Well, it sure beats the hell out of being Waller's own personal flying monkeys, that's for damn sure," he drawled carelessly. "Even if we don't make it out of this god forsaken mess you've gotten yourselves into, at least we won't be at her beck and call. Sometimes I think she's just as crazy as that Harley Quinn muttering about her imaginary patients down the hall."

Oliver shot Lyla and Digg a questioning look, and Lyla held up a hand to stop his question before he even asked it. "It's a long story," she offered instead.

"Of course it is," Oliver conceded all too willingly. "You guys didn't happen to see Sara's League friends out there did you?"

"I clocked a couple of figures on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings," Lyla said, "but no sign of Sara yet." She set about unshackling Lawton and Turner's hands from their reinforced cuffs, and the men rubbed their wrists as they were freed.

White China scoffed. "You forgot about the ones hiding just inside the alleyways and under the cars parked on the streets," she added as her own handcuffs were undone. She didn't reach for her wrists to alleviate the stiffness in them, instead choosing to let them hang limply at her sides. Her penetrating gaze shifted to Oliver's face. "League of Assassins, if I'm not mistaken? What would be their interest in helping you? Ra's al Ghul does not involve himself or his organization in the affairs of common men."

"Does Slade Wilson seem like a common man to you?" Roy demanded of her, his chin lifting a fraction in a show of bravery and obstinacy. "Because he sure as hell doesn't seem 'common' to me."

Disregarding Roy pointedly, White China continued, "I hope you have a plan, Oliver Queen. These men will not go down easily, if at all. What makes you so sure that you can stop them in the first place after all your failures to stop them before?"

Oliver lifted one of the injection arrows. "This," he said, holding it up for the fugitives to see. "It's a cure to the super serum that turned these men into monsters."

"Well, how do you know it works?" Torque inquired, more out of curiosity than defiance.

Roy stood proudly with Oliver. "Because it worked on me," he answered with a sense of finality. "I was injected with the mirakuru serum. Slade's lackeys captured me in Blüdhaven and connected me to a centrifuge. They used my blood to create this army that's tearing apart the city. If the cure worked on me, it will work on them too."

"We're aiming to cure, not kill," Oliver instructed the squad. "No casualties unless absolutely necessary. Dropping bodies isn't our objective, turning these monsters back into men is. Anyone who has objections to that . . . there's the door, but just know that you won't last long with bombs in your spines and men who can tear you limb from limb hunting you down out there."

No one moved for the door, but Deadshot leaned against the stainless steel table and said, "Yeah, I'm not a bow and arrows kind of guy myself. You wouldn't happen to have any bullets with that cure in them would you?"

Lyla and Diggle smiled knowingly, and Lyla lifted a briefcase that she had carried in with her. "We thought you might feel that way, Floyd," she told him. Walking over to the table and setting the case on it, she flipped open the locks and opened up the case to reveal several hollow bullets filled with the neon blue substance. "A.R.G.U.S. standard issue, soluble tranquilization bullets, now outfitted with the latest strain of mirakuru cure," Lyla explained, plucking one of the bullets from the padded slots. "Once the bullet enters a body, there's a ten second delay before the bullet dissolves and releases the cure, but it'll drop its target immediately on impact."

Deadshot looked at Diggle with a wicked grin. "You hold on to this one, Diggle," he said, referring to Lyla. "She doesn't sound like the kind of woman you want to scorn."

John placed his hand proudly on Lyla's shoulder and replied, "She's not," in an emphatic tone.

"Returning to point," Lyla cut in glaring at Deadshot and then at Diggle, "let's lock and load it. We've got t-minus thirteen hours and counting before Waller brings the entire collective force of A.R.G.U.S.'s reserved fire power down on Starling City."

"Then perhaps it would be wise to move up our time table," came another unexpected voice from the foundry entrance. Everyone turned to find a small legion of dark robed figures being led by a raven-haired woman in a red shoulder pauldron with the black leather-clad Canary next to her.

Sara briefly met Oliver's eyes and grimaced to him. He could see the struggle in her eyes of being caught between doing what was necessary and what was preferable. She, like Oliver, was at a loss, and thereby choosing the lesser of two great dangers.

"How's Felicity?" Oliver asked Sara.

"She was sedated and healing when I left the hospital," Sara answered him quietly.

"How much longer until she's . . . her . . again?" Roy asked hesitantly.

Glancing to the still-operational clock on the foundry wall, Sara distractedly responded, "Twenty minutes, if all goes according to plan. The hyper-healing agent has never been used to heal anything like the trauma Felicity's body sustained during Slade's torture." She worried her bottom lip between her teeth while sending up a silent prayer to whatever deity might be listening that Felicity would be left better rather than worse by their attempts to speed her recovery along. More to herself, she added under her breath, "God I hope this works."

Sara knew she would never forgive herself if it didn't.

It was as if some cruel entity had poured molten lava in her veins and was shaking it around inside of her. Someone must have thrown her into the fiery depths of hell, Felicity thought; there was no other way humanly possible for her to be experiencing this kind of ungodly agony. Even the pain that Slade had inflicted upon her felt like a tickle compared to the feeling of every single individual molecule in her body buzzing with electricity and threatening to explode. Every inch of her body was covered in the pins-and-needles feeling that came from having the blood flow cut off and reopened again. She wanted to scream and cry and thrash, but the agony she was experiencing made even the slightest movement impossible. She wanted to die, just so that the pain would stop and she could slip into that peaceful state of nothingness.

When Sara had warned her of the immense pain she would feel, Felicity hadn't taken the words to heart. She thought Sara was over-exaggerating, being excessively protective and worried, underestimating Felicity's capabilities. If anything, Sara had been giving Felicity's ability to withstand pain too much credit. Sara had thought too highly of her, put too much faith in Felicity, believed she had more strength than she really did.

Her pulse was racing, her heart rate was dangerously high, her blood pressure was through the roof. Her red blood cells raced to deliver excessive amounts of oxygen and energy to too many different places all at once, her white blood cells were fighting double-time to stave off potential threats, her platelets were hyperactive in their attempts to regenerate. Felicity felt everything too intensely, too much, too quickly, all at once. It felt like the pain would never stop, that her heart would surely seize up or give out before the accelerated healing process was through.

From somewhere in the haze of excruciation, a memory managed to slip through the cracks of Felicity's consciousness. It took root and flourished in the front of her mind, pushing the pain back to the edges of her awareness. Felicity felt the memory wrap itself around her sentience like a protective cocoon.

. . .

. . . It was late – or early, depending on how you looked at it – but Felicity was still working on improving the computer's firewalls in the foundry. Roy had taken off days ago and, after finding no trace of him aside from a traffic light snapshot of a red car with stolen license plates leaving Starling City almost a week ago, he had finally turned up on Felicity's radar. Oliver and Digg had been quick to go searching for him in Blüdhaven where Felicity had picked up an image of him stopping a team of armed robbers outside a jewelry store there. Sara had been with Laurel for most of the past week, both sisters doing whatever they could to plead their father's case after Officer Lance had been arrested for working with the vigilantes. Thea had closed the club upstairs only a few hours ago but already everything was quiet in the lair without their crack team of crime-fighters working their nightly missions.

It was in these quiet, early morning moments, that Felicity allowed herself the time and intemperance to think, to feel, to simply be. She wore so many faces during the day; IT girl, Oliver Queen's assistant, hacker, and Team's Arrow's resident computer genius were only a few of the many; sometimes she forgot what it felt like to just be Felicity. She loved her boys, but between Oliver's over-protectiveness and Digg's over-insightfulness and Roy's over-zealousness, sometimes she grew weary being among them all the time. She liked the quiet peace.

The computers had to be rebooted to activate the new, more robust firewalls, so Felicity set up the reboot and stood up. She stretched her tired muscles and looked around the room. The clock on the wall read just after four o'clock in the morning, and for an exhausted and fleeting moment, Felicity was content with the fact that she didn't have to go to work at Queen Consolidated today; Isabel had been quick to terminate her employment soon after assuming the position of permanent CEO at the corporation.

In her sleep-deprived state of mind, Felicity's eyes wandered over to the new bow Oliver had spent time trying to teach Roy to use. She looked around, over her shoulders, as if expecting someone else to appear out of nowhere, before she took the bow from its stand and one of the many quivers of arrows from Oliver's makeshift arsenal. Roy hadn't had much luck with archery so far, but Felicity wasn't under the same pressure, she just needed something to keep her anxiety down while the computers were rebooting and the new software was loading.

Felicity held the grip of the bow in her non-dominant hand and nocked the arrow to the bowstring. She turned toward the firing dummy and drew the bowstring back with a finger on either side of the arrow nock just as she had watched Oliver do countless times. She held it for a moment, long enough to inhale and exhale calmly, and then let go.

The arrow hit its mark just inside the outer ring of the target.

"Not bad," said a female voice, causing Felicity to start and nearly drop the bow altogether. She whipped around to find Sara still staring at the arrow. "Closer than Roy, anyway."

Sara came over and placed her hands on either side of Felicity's waist from behind, then took her foot and slid one of Felicity's feet back, just as she had done a few weeks ago when Felicity had been punching the sparring dummy. She expected that Sara would step away after correcting her posture, but that wasn't what happened. Instead, Sara moved closer and leaned down to pick up another arrow. She gently wrapped her left hand around Felicity's on the grip, and put the arrow into the other girl's hand. As Felicity tightened her grip around the projectile, Sara's right hand closed over hers, leading it to nock the arrow once again.

"Keep your feet shoulders'-width apart and brace your knees," Sara instructed Felicity quietly. "Keep your upper-body relaxed," – she pulled on Felicity's hand that was holding the nock of the arrow and drew the string back – "relax your grip on the riser, look through the sight window, and aim." Sara paused, waiting patiently as Felicity followed her directions. "Then, take a deep breath, feel your heartbeat, and right between the beats . . . that's when you release."

Felicity waited, felt, and then let go in between the beats. The arrow struck closer to the eye of the target this time, not dead-center but closer than before. She felt Sara step back and a chill hit her back where the other woman had been pressed close.

She lowered the bow and turned to face her unexpected mentor with a slightly sheepish smile. Sara smirked back at her without a trace of hesitation or embarrassment or apology. After a moment of simply looking at each other, Felicity turned away. Trying to keep an appearance of nonchalance, Felicity went about picking up the quiver and bringing it and the bow back to their rightful places.

Felicity cleared her throat. "I didn't know you could use a bow and arrow too," she remarked openly.

Sara smiled and went over to the glass case that held her suit, withdrawing her weapon. "I'm partial to the bō staff myself, but I know my way around more than one weapon. The League of Assassins trained me in a variety of weaponry during my time with them," she explained.

"I'd like to try but . . . " Felicity trailed off, biting her lower lip. "You saw how Oliver reacted when he saw me just punching the dummy. He likes to keep me out of the crossfire, behind the computer screens, where I'm safe and I know what I'm doing."

"Well I don't want you in the line of fire either," Sara said emphatically, staring at Felicity with a soft, non-patronizing look, "but, in my experience, sooner or later you find yourself in danger no matter what. It's better to be prepared when it happens." Sara grinned and gestured with her head for Felicity to follow her over to the mats. She looked over her shoulder as they walked and added, "Besides, it wouldn't kill Ollie to loosen the reigns around here a little. I hate to say anything, but everything Roy said before he left? He had a point."

Felicity just barely managed to stop herself from making a comment about whether Sara thought Roy was right about her taking Oliver's side because Sara was having sex with him. That would have been embarrassing, not to mention inappropriate. She wasn't sure they knew each other well enough to make those kinds of remarks.

Sara pivoted on the mat, causing Felicity to stop and nearly slam into her. She hurriedly backpedalled but Sara grabbed her upper-arms and slid her hands down to grip Felicity's fingers with her own. The motion felt almost . . . charged . . to Felicity, but that may have been her imagination running wild with her. The way Sara's eyes raked up her body and met Felicity's with a coy look, well, that was probably her imagination too. It had to be.

"You ever taken dance lessons?" Sara asked suddenly, seemingly out of the blue.

"When I was a kid, and then we had this awkward fine arts requirement in high school and I got put into the dance class and, well, it was sort of mortifying actually," Felicity rambled. She shut up when she caught Sara's amused smirk. "Sorry," she added, blushing bright scarlet.

"Don't be. You're cute," Sara told her. It was becoming a regular thing for her to dismiss Felicity's awkwardness with a comment of her being cute instead. "I only ask because hand-to-hand, in any form, is like a dance. It's also like a competition, to see who leads and who follows. If you have the upper hand and you're attacking, then you're leading. If you're just trying to defend yourself against an attack and gain the upper hand, then you're following. Make sense?"

Felicity nodded. "I'm with you so far, but what if I don't know the steps?" she asked, going along with the analogy.

"Well that's what I'm going to teach you," Sara explained. "But first, you have to clear out the clutter in your mind, push everything aside, compartmentalize, and empty your mind."

Felicity backed off just a little with a hesitant expression. "Yeah . . . I'm not really the best at that," Felicity admitted. "My mind's kind of always going a million miles per minute. It's lucky I have a fast internal processor, otherwise I'd overload and short circuit."

Sara chuckled a little. "I kind of love it when you speak geek," she told Felicity, causing Felicity to blush profusely. "And that's my whole point. Distractions equal mistakes and, in this case, mistakes can cost you your life, and I don't think I could handle that. So I want you to close your eyes."

Felicity gave Sara and odd look. She liked Sara, but without knowing where the older girl was going with this, she wasn't really sure if she trusted her all that much. Sara was still a newly-retired world-class assassin.

"Hey," Sara said softly, squeezing Felicity's hands before moving hers to the other girl's shoulders. "You can trust me, okay? I would never hurt you, Felicity. Never."

The sincerity and reverence in Sara's voice let Felicity know that she meant what she said beyond a shadow of a doubt. Felicity let her eyes slip closed and she felt Sara's hands slide back down into hers and their bodies aligned. It was a blatant invasion of personal space, but one that Felicity felt oddly at peace with. Sara was gentler than Felicity thought possible, much more reassuring than expected.

"Focus on something that relaxes you," Sara instructed. "A place, a person, a sound . . . something that comforts you. Push every other thought away except for this one thing. Let it fill your whole mind, lose yourself in it, let it wash over you. Focus on every detail. Have you got it?"

"Yes," Felicity answered, her eyes opening slowly and focusing on the pale green color of Sara's irises. "I think I do."

. . .

Felicity remembered the way Sara had taught her to hone her senses, to focus, to accept the pain that came rather than fight against it.
"Fighting against the pain only makes it harder to keep fighting the real threat," Sara had told her. "Accept it, acknowledge it, then push it to the wayside like everything else. The pain will still be there when the threat is eliminated."
Right now that threat was Slade Wilson. That threat was to her safety, to the city she called home, and to the lives and well-beings of the people who mattered the most to her. The others could fight him, but none of them could fight in the way that Felicity did. They needed her, so she needed to stop fighting this pain and let it take her and remake her into herself once more.

Once she allowed herself to face that pain head-on, it began to cease. Not all at once, but gradually. The pain didn't stop, but it started to become something else. Strength. Felicity felt strong.

Her senses slowly returned to her, ebbing back into effect. The pain phased out and the real world refocused again. She could feel scratchy hospital sheets, taste a gross metallic aftertaste in her mouth, smell antiseptic, hear footsteps and pagers going off and the soft unintelligible whispers of Laurel and Sin, and finally, when her eyelids forced themselves open, she could see them, sitting there and casting their gazes between one another and back to Felicity. It was Laurel who was the first to recognize her open eyes.

"Hey," she said softly, her tone coated with concern. She quickly moved to Felicity's bedside. "How are you feeling? Are you okay?"

Felicity pushed herself into a sitting position and moved each of her limbs individually, "Um . . ." After seeing that she could move with only the smallest of twinges in her arms and ribs, Felicity smiled up at Laurel and Sin. "I feel great," she told them in amazement. "Actually I feel like I've been dipped in the River Styx."

Laurel smiled, half-relieved and half-amused. "Don't go getting any Iliad ideas on me," she warned playfully. "Remember that even Achilles had that bad heel."

Sin glanced back and forth between the two, a look of annoyed confusion written on her face. "And I'm officially out of the loop again," she announced, throwing her hands up carelessly. "Somebody wanna fill me in?"

"It's not important," Felicity told her, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and planting her feet on the floor. She smiled at how little pain she experienced from the action, and then she lifted her face to look at her friends, "Did Digg and Lyla get that router set up?"

"Locked, loaded, and ready to go on the roof," Sin answered dutifully.

"Good," Felicity said. She pushed herself to her feet, "Then let's go save the city." She paused and then added excitedly, "I've always wanted to say that!"

With that, she headed for the door and Laurel and Sin exchanged alarmed looks.

"Where are you going?!" Sin demanded, quickly rising to her feet from the chair beside Felicity's vacated hospital bed.

"To the roof!" Felicity called over her shoulder.

Sin cast a look to Laurel. "Um . . . does she know she's still only wearing a hospital gown?" the girl asked uncomfortably.

Laurel wasn't sure how to answer that so she just grabbed a change of Felicity's clothes that Diggle had brought and ran out the door after her friend with Sin on her heels. "Did Sara say anything about any side effects to this miracle healing drug?" she cried as they hurriedly followed the blonde tech through the hallways with several attending staff giving them strange looks on their way.

They reached the flight of stairs with roof access. "You mean the highly experimental miracle healing drug that's never been administered in a controlled environment before?" Sin questioned.

Laurel paused just before the door that would let them out onto the top of the hospital. "Good point," she admitted shortly.

I just wanted to say thanks for all the reviews! You guys have been great to me! Keep 'em coming and let me know what you think! xoxo HJ.