Last time: The three remaining team-members looked hopefully at each other. This might be a real chance to find… Oliver. They had to try!

„Do it!" Roy and Diggle both said in unison, but Felicity was already a step ahead of them.

"On it!" She exclaimed.

xoxoxo

He shivered. Not for actual physical cold. But rather a lingering memory of utter coldness so deeply settled into his bones that it seemed impossible to ever feel warm again.A sharp, unrelenting pain. It radiated outwards from his core, seeping into every cell and through every pore of his body, making his skin feel tingly and sensitive. A thousand icy needles piercing his skin. It hurt!

Maybe, if he didn't move, it wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe, if he just lay still, it would go away, he thought. And so he lay utterly still. Prayed. Hoped. Sometimes, he even wished for death to come and claim him, just so the pain and the coldness would stop. But it never did . He was made to endure and withstand the coldness as the pain lingered on.

They made him numb to all other sensations, consumed his every waking moment, making it hard to focus on any other thought or anything around him. The world was there, he could see it, sense it, and yet it was beyond his reach. He was trapped in his frozen shell. Couldn't feel, couldn't think, couldn't remember.

Sometimes the coldness would recede for a time, allowing him some freedom of thought. His eyes would focus, showing him the world which lay beyond. They would roam around the dark room he was in, taking in the dirty, earth packed floor and the stony wall in front of his face. He would smell the musty scent of the air around him and feel the coarse material of the mattress he was laying one beneath his fingertips. How had he come to be here? Where was 'here'?

But those fleeting thoughts vanished, when the coldness returned.

Other times his mind would show him fleeting images. Memories? Never whole ones, just fragments. There was a hand holding an arrow. He saw a zipper on a red hoody. He witnessed a dark hand shaking a light one. And for some reason he saw the keys of a keyboard. But most often he saw a smiling mouth framed by pink lips. Who were these people? Who was the woman with the pink lips? Did he know them?

He strained to see more, desperately wanting to remember, but the images remained hazy, and every time he tried to focus on them, a dark green mist would rise to swallow them. He dreaded those moments. The images would begin to morph; the shaking hands would become fists, the hand holding the arrow turned into a claw, the smiling was replaced by a gaping maw. And they would start to tear, bite at him, hurting him.

If he had the strength left, his senses not yet having dulled and his body turned numb, he would gasp, begging them to leave him alone, to make the pain stop. Don't know you. No. Don't touch. Hurts. No… It was an endless cycle from where escape seemed , pain, numbness, misery. When would it end?

Suddenly, an unbearable pain, sliced through his skin, a cold burning touch at his ankles, wrists and on his face. It had happened twice before! And it made him want to scream, but he lacked the breath to. Instead he could just twist and writhe and gasp. Broken pleas fell from his lips: 'No… please… don't. Hurts. Don't touch. - Nooo!'

xoxoxo

Maseo angrily threw the cell door shut and closed the bolt. Another day he wished he could strike from his memory. But the human mind was a thing of beauty, making him able to relive and see all his memories in glorious detail. The ones he cherished, though they had become few, and the ones he would rather forget; this one being one of the latter. It would be forever burned into his mind, the body of his 'friend' lying struggling, writhing and gasping beneath him, as he was fed another bowl of broth.

He gritted his teeth, chancing a look through the bars of the door into the dark interior of the cell, catching a glimpse of Oliver's shivering from. Damnit! Taking a deep breath to center himself, he looked at the guards, who had helped him with his task. "Leave!" he ordered in the calmest of voices, barely more than a whisper. They nodded and went without question. After all, he was their superior, and it did not do to question one's superior's orders.

Maseo waited for their footsteps to retreat, until he could no longer hear them, before giving in and sliding down the cell's door, until he reached the floor. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back against the wooden blanks and exhaled deeply. This had to stop. He did not know how long he could continue. And yet, he had to. Oliver had to survive, such had been the task given to him by The Demon. And even if he hadn't been ordered to do it, he still would have had to find a way, to 'help' his friend. He just wished, there was another way…

"Sarab?"

His body tensed at the softly spoken words. What? He hadn't even heard Halari approach. „What are you doing down here?" Maseo questioned Ra's' body-servant, while hastily standing up and berating himself for being so preoccupied that he had obviously lost awareness of his surroundings. It wouldn't happen again, he promised himself.

Halari looked at him from beneath her lashes, darks orbs studying the man in front of her, then, without a word, she stepped up to the cell-door to gaze inside. She considered Oliver's shivering frame for a while, not a word crossing her lips. Silence hung across the torch-lit corridor. Her eyes still on the foreigner, she finally answered. "Master sent me, he wants to know how this one is doing." But her voice sounded odd to Maseo, almost wistful. Was it really only The Demon who wanted to know?

"It is hard to say. His mind is a dark place, it seems. And he still can't bear to be touched. For some reason it seems to cause him insufferable agony." Maseo told her, and then paused as if he was considering his next words carefully. "He once was my friend. And it pains me to see him this way. I wish I knew how to help him." He confessed to the woman.

Halari turned towards him, a kind smile on her lips, one that reached the eyes. "I might know of a way," she whispered. With those words, she took his right hand in both of hers, laid something into the palm of his hand and folded his fingers across it. Then, without another word, she left as silently as she had come.

When she was gone, Maseo opened his hand. And in it he found a small vial of amber colored liquid.