"At the temple there is a poem called 'Loss' carved into the stone.
It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out.
You cannot read loss, only feel it."
- Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
If you asked her about it, Sara probably wouldn't answer, but in the privacy of her own head, she thinks she knows herself in an unapologetic kind of way. In fact, most days she is almost sure that having the nerve to hold an honest mirror up to her own face had been what saved her life. She never truly let herself forget who she was, even when it hurt to be reminded, and in the end that was what gave her the strength to get away from the League before the they could kill her in all the ways a person could be killed. (when she had felt at her lowest, she had chose a half life on the run rather than sink lower. Because is was Sara Lance: she knows there is always a lower)
That mirror though, it has been distorted, smudged and cracked by the marks that violence and horror have left on her, so maybe her 'honest self' isn't quite as true to reality as she used to think. Maybe it's just as true that she sees herself as uglier than she really is, sometimes.
But this thought is young in her head. It's grown safely there guarded by the memory of the joy in Laurel's smile, her fierce will; by her parents' love and the bright hope on Oliver's face every time she made the decision to crawl just a little farther from her own resigned misery. Guarded, during the darkest times, by Nyssa's unbending love 'for what in you is beautiful and that which in you is a storm'…
Every single person Sara had allowed herself to care about in spite of being afraid, or angry, or lost, had reminded her how to love herself back, as well as keep herself alive. And every person she'd let in, had made a new rising sun feel a little bit like a victory. It had helped her find her way back to believing that life was worthy of more than just breathing. That it was meant for living – in spite of everything that has scared you, hurt you, tried to maim you. Despite of it.
But Sara is too smart not to know that there is a price for everything you dare reach for in this world, and that that it is never to be paid for cheaply. She knows this truth the way fighters and blood-tainted survivors do: through the of weight of losing. The same way she knows there are things that happen sometimes, for which there can never be words. Feelings that refuse to be contained in them.
Like that moment when you win a tug of war. When the weight gives and all that extra rope comes hurling towards you. How, even though you've won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands[1] … How can there be a word for that? If there is, Sara doesn't know it.
But she recognizes the promise of it tugging her diaphragm up, up, up, pushing against her lungs. (people say that scent memory is the most powerful, but if you ask Sara, she'd tell you fear-memory is stronger) She barrels through STAR Labs already feeling the flip in her stomach before the fall even comes.
The first thing she recognizes is the glassy stain of shock on Roy's face. He seems stuck between devastation and disbelief and looking at him Sara tells herself that it's ok. That she doesn't know know which way the truth has gone, not yet.
But that's a lie. The floor is already shifting beneath her feet. The weight has started dropping.
She sees Oliver and John huddled in a corner of a glass room with too many machines and too little light, the top of Felicity's blonde head peeking between them… and her palms burn like they're being skinned. In a tiny corner of her brain, a scared voice that sounds younger than Sara has in years, reminds her that there are no word for this, and that's why moving closer to that glass feels like dragging bare feet through a desert-hot stone.
It hits her so hard in the chest she can't breathe; the air feels too thin.
For moments that stretches endlessly, she feels like her feet have grown roots and she will never move from this spot, that this moment will never end, never break.
And then it does.
Sara doesn't know what wakes her into action. Maybe it's the way Oliver's shoulders shake, or the way John's hand hovers over Felicity's head but doesn't dare touch her, as if he's afraid. She doesn't know, doesn't care.
Sara turns her head, a snarl slashing her fury open all over her face.
"Why are you just standing there?" She asks thickly, fear curdling into anger on the way out. "Do something!"
The redhead jumps.
"There is nothing left for us to do." The man in the wheelchair says calmly, as if her anger doesn't touch him and for a moment Sara deliberates punching him in the face for his calm.
She scowls instead.
"Fuck you," and strides for the door. "Open it."
The girl's fingers shake but she is quick to punch in the code. Sara slithers in before the door has opened fully.
The distance from the door to the corner stretches on like an infinite tunnel before Sara makes herself take the first step, and the another, and another still, until she's kneeling by Oliver and John's sides, close enough to hear the gasping breaths Oliver is taking and see Diggle's unblinking tears collecting on his chin.
Digg notices her but shock doesn't allow him a reaction. Oliver hasn't even looked up from where he's hiding his face in Felicity's shoulder. Her head is tucked against the side of his neck, hands in her lap, loose and unmoving. She could be sleeping.
Sara knows she's not. She's seen too many dead bodies not to recognize their unnatural stillness when she sees it.
Dead. Between one breath and another, gone.
Not Felicity anymore. Just a body, now.
Grief erupts in her chest, stealing her breath in a soundless gasp, but like the explosion of a star, before it can come out of her in sobs, it collapses right back into itself, a black hole of pain, making Sara feel like her ribcage is going to implode and suck her right out of existence. Her throat constricts and she hates herself for not having tears, for having forgotten how to let these feelings out before they choke her.
She doesn't know how. She can only gasp breath after breath and shake, the way Oliver does.
Oliver…
He's digging his fingers in Felicity's arm so hard that he's leaving indentations. It doesn't quite manage to hide the way his hands are shaking.
And that's when Sara wakes up.
"Oliver…" But her voice breaks halfway, so she tries again. "Ollie, please."
It's useless, no words can reach him. She knows this. She tries to touch him, but her fingers brush a cold cheek and Sara pulls her hand back as if it's been stung.
Dead…
God, knowing it and feeling it as real is so different. She wants to grab Oliver and shake him, tell him to let that body go. She's gone!
As if heìd heard her thoughts, Oliver curls himself even more tightly around what's left, muffled little sobs making their way out of him as if he doesn't have enough breath to even cry about it.
Sara feels resolve solidifying in her out of sheer need. She grabs it and holds on to it, lets it expand her ribcage to make space for air. It's easier to breathe now that she has found something to do, something that is not crumbling here to hurt. And someone has to do it, so it might as well be her.
Sara grits her teeth, grasps his shoulder gently.
"Ollie, look at me." He doesn't. He doesn't react at all, it's as if he isn't listening. He just holds the body tighter.
Digg shifts to give her more room, and Sara inches closer.
"Oliver." She tries to make her voice soft this time. As soft as she can, as low as she can. Loud will never get through to him now, but gentle might. Sara grasps the back of his neck, careful not to touch… anything… Careful.
She closes her eyes. One breath, then another. In and out. It's not so hard.
And then again. "Oliver, It's Sara. Come on, look up."
He does - and stares straight through her, eyes bloodshot and wet with tears, completely unfocused. Now that his head is not in the way Sara can see her profile. The line of a familiar face, an upturned nose.
Bone pale, and still and so excruciatingly young.
And there it goes, the first crack. Straight to her chest.
'I'm not strong enough for this.'
The thought flits through her head like a whisper. But like all other fears, she pushes it away and does what she always has: what she must.
"I need you to let John take Felicity okay? I need you to let her go." He shakes his head minutely but doesn't really look like he understands what she means at all. "Just for now, okay? Just for now."
Heavy tears fall from his eyes on his already wet cheeks, and Sara feels her heart shred right down the middle. Her own pain she can take. God knew she's used to it. It was a familiar beast and she'd learned by now to keep it still enough to function through it.
But his…
It's too open to avoid, it runs too deep, too harsh to hide. Sara feels his pain more keenly than she ever felt her own. It makes her sight blur, her chin shake.
"Sara?" His voice is soaked in despair. It overflows. Like everything else about him, about this, it overwhelms.
That numbness that has kept Sara together since she came here is starting to fray at the edges. For the very first time, she feels like if she gave in, she could truly cry her heart out this time.
But then who would ever hold him together?
"Sara…"
He sounds more aware this time, but says her name it it means something else. Like rope, the word twists and and it means 'help me' instead. Sara feels it sneak around her neck and pull tight.
She can't.
Hope died in his arms again and there is nothing she can do. Nothing she can say.
('One too many times' she thinks. And she's afraid.)
"Yeah it's me. It's okay. Just… let her go. Just for now. Just…" she closes her eyes, sneaks her hand over his, her fingers between his and a cold unmoving body.
Let go, Oliver. Just let go.
He's always been shit at letting go. He's been carrying corpses around on his back for years, his own sick version of 'nobody gets left behind'.
But to her surprise, the hold of his hands eases.
John inches forward, slides one arm beneath Felicity's knees, around her back. Sara catches a look of that pale face, the trickle of blood smudged at the corner of her mouth, the rest of it pressed against the side of Oliver's neck like a last gory kiss.
Sara closes her eyes against it.
No relief, behind her lids though. No relief for her anywhere. Her hands shake.
Oliver just lets it happen, but because Sara is afraid what he'll do with those hand once they're free of her body, she takes them in hers instead and holds on tight. She thinks absently if maybe it would be better to sedate him, but though his pulse is flying under her fingertips, he sits so still now, staring into space and so unmoving that that too is starting to worry her.
John sets Felicity's body down on the bed at the other corner of the room. Sara doesn't look at him do it. She can't. She can only take so much of this at a time.
Time…
She doesn't even have much of that left either.
The burn of a sudden, deep-reaching rage scorches her from the inside, so hot that it melts through her shock and covers her in a wave of cold sweat. She knows who did this. And when she finds him… Oh, when she finds him, she will put the League's terrors to shame. Enact each and every horror she has ever known of on his skin. She'll carve him up for days.
The mire of violence almost consumes her - but even that is not loud enough to block the doctor's soft 'Oh my god'.
That whisper, the horror in it, splinters the silence of the room clean in two.
Sara's head snaps in her direction, instantly alert.
"What?" She asks, her hand twitching around Oliver's, who blinks slowly and looks up.
But the doctor isn't minding them at all. She's moving so fast it's a wonder she doesn't break anything, navigating the wires and machinery with the same precision a Sara wields her own weapons. She's hooking Felicity's body up to the monitors instead of calling the time and covering her up, and it all feels so backwards that for a moment Sara wonders when the fuck she fell down the rabbit hole, because nothing is making sense.
But then she hears it.
It's too slow, and too faint, but it's there. One heartbeat, marked into existence by the shrill, undeniable beep of the machine.
It pierces Sara's ears like a scream. Oliver's hands convulses in hers, holding on so hard that she can feel her bones bending, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care!
Because the next beat of Felicity's heart takes too long to come. The whole room, the whole world, could be holding its breath for all Sara knows.
And then it's there, marked by the beep as the one before and Sara feels relief so strong that her spine seems to collapse with it. She literally folds into herself for a moment, bracing one free hand on the pavement.
The doctor fits around, hands moving so fast they're almost a blur. The other man wheels himself in quickly, starts helping. Sara has no idea what they are doing. Her eyes are fixed on the too-slow-but-definitely-there heartbeat of the friend that for a full fifteen minutes and a side of forever, she had believed dead. But she's not.
Not a body.
Felicity!
Sara bites her lip so hard it hurts, it bleeds. And with the coppery taste of her own blood in her mouth, finally - finally, the tears come too. Out of nowhere and without her permission, they trickle down Sara's cheeks, collect on her chin and fall down, pulled by gravity to the floor.
"What is going on?" Oliver asks, his voice so rough it sounds like it's scraping his throat rough just so he can speak. When nobody answers him, he asks again, and this time a thread of anger makes his words into almost a threat.
The doctors don't react at all, too engrossed in their work trying to keep that faint heartbeat going but Sara and John turn to him.
"I don't know." Sara says, trying to keep her voice steady. "Lets just wait and see."
But she can't wait. Her time here is running out. She has a plane to catch. A killer to chase. Anticipation makes her grit her teeth. She has a heart to cut out.
God, she hasn't reveled in the thought of violence like this in so long, even newborn hope can't seem to cut it out of her. There is a part, that part that will always long to be good, no matter what darkness stains her and for how long, that makes Sara feel ashamed of the impulse. But not even in that part is she sorry.
The remainder of the backwards count of time wakes Sara up though, grief shaking off her bones like sleep. She has to tell them, and somehow, she has to convince Oliver that he can't come with her.
She's not sure how she's gonna do that.
The redhead tells them firmly to get out just as she unzips the top of Felicity's suit, looking for a vein on the inside of her elbow again.
Sara looks away.
"Come on. We can't stay here right now." She says, though even to her own ears her voice sounds weaker than usual. It makes her skin prickle with uncomfortableness though, being there. If she were in that bed, Sara thinks, she wouldn't want to be gawked at like this while she is unaware and so painfully vulnerable. It's not right.
But Oliver and John, even Roy from the door, don't react. They all look like they're hypnotized.
When Sara turns her eyes to Felicity, she sees why.
The two doctors have turned on the lights over the bed, so that they can see what they're doing and under the unforgiving fluorescent glow, the situations suddenly comes to life in all it's horrifying detail. Because while the redhead hooks Felicity up to the new IV, the other doc has pushed her tank-top up very slightly, so that he can change the bandages and clean the wound. And there on the bare skin of her arm, bloom bruises shaped like hands, grotesque for how accurate the imprint is.
Nobody bruises like that, Sara thinks. It's as if Oliver's hands had stained on her skin, pressing ink there, not a touch.
Sara can see the contusion changing color right before her eyes, and it sends a chill down her spine. But that's not what makes her mouth go dry. It's the sight of Felicity's wound on her abdomen, where whatever she had been poisoned with had been injected.
She cannot believe it. She truly thinks her eyes are lying to her.
Sara feels her heart beating in her ears as she lets go of Oliver's hand and stands up slowly. Someone says her name but she's not listening. For the first time since a gunshot had gone off a foot from her face and killed Shado right before her eyes, Sara truly turns to whatever fucking god there is up there and prays hard for this to be a hallucination.
The doc is about to put a fresh bandage over the wound when Sara stops him.
"Wait." Her voice is a whisper, but he hears it.
The wound is so small, Sara can't even see it. Just a prickle of a tiny needle. But the skin around it… God…
It's blue and violent, like a ripe bruise from a hard hit, starting on her abdomen and spreading like inkstain in water over Felicity's tpp-skin. But Sara can see her veins spidering through it like tiny red rivers, even beyond the bruised area. One of them ran beneath her tank-top, probably all the way to her heart.
Its as if her skin has turned transparent…
The doctor grows impatient with her stone stillness. He bandages Felicity's abdomen and gently pulls her tanktop down before telling her in a no-nonsense voice to respect the privacy of their friend and get out of the room.
Sara hardly hears him.
She's never seen a wound like that in all her years. No poison that she knew of could do that.
… None but one.
"Is she…" But her voice catches so she has to clear her throat and try again. "Is she in a coma?"
The redhead considers her with a frown, suspicion making her blue eyes weary. "Her parameters seem to indicate that yes. However unusual, she did slip into a coma."
This is supposed to be good news, but dread is eating away at Sara's heart one bite at a time.
"What's so unusual about it?"
The doctor puts Felicity's hand gently back on the bed and covers her with the pink blanket that Sara and Roy brought her.
"The parameters of her vitals are all in congruence with those of a coma patient. But her brain's wavelength is not." The doc looks starts preparing another syringe. "According to her brain, she's just in deep sleep."
Sara lets those words sink in and the weight of them, of what they might mean, pulls her lids closed with exhaustion.
"It's impossible…" she cannot bear to say it louder than a whisper.
More than that: it's forbidden!
The words hiss in her head like the sound of a blade against whetstone, the threat of their mere possibility enough to curdle her blood.
"Sara!"
She startles and turns to Digg. She doesn't know what he sees on her face, if he can read her terror, but it stops him cold. She hasn't had time to conceal it, doesn't even know if she could even if she tried. She feels transparent and shaken.
Oliver is already on his feet, so Sara stalks to him, takes his and and pulls him behind herself, out of the room.
"Move."
She doesn't look to make sure the others are following. Her steps are fast and her breath shallow. She knows her hands are clammy but she doesn't care. So are Oliver's.
Oliver, who pulls at her hand to stop her.
"Where are you going?"
But he sounds absent, his head turned behind him, looking in Felicity's direction.
"Somewhere we can talk. I have to fill you all in."
Not even that seems to catch enough of his attention and Sara wonders how much of him is here with her and how much of him is still in that room, holding on to another dead body.
She shoves open the first door she finds. It happens to be a small storage room, almost empty but for a few shelves. Sara takes it in, looking for cameras, any form of surveillance.
It looks clean, but nevertheless, she takes out her phone and activates the anti surveillance app that Felicity installed there not even seven months ago. If anyone is listening, either by tape or digitally, the sub-audible tone the phone emits would turn all recordings blank.
Oliver is standing still as a statue by the door as Digg and Roy file in, closing the door behind them. She can hardly look at him without flinching at the sight of the blood on his neck, of what it means.
In those few precious moments she has, Sara allows herself to shake loose, and then pulls herself back together. She can't drag this. She has to shove herself past the threshold of disbelief and deal with it because her time is almost up.
She straightens and tries to stop feeling like a fucking caged animal with panic snapping right at her heels.
It's a valiant effort but it goes mostly to waste.
"I don't have a lot of time, so we have to do this quick." Sara says, as plainly as she can. "I have to go in 45 minutes."
"Go? Go where?" John asks. His face is scrubbed dry of the tears there were there before and how he looks just tired and stonily resolute. "What happened back there?"
"Do you have a lead?" Roy follows.
Sara raises her hand to stop them.
"I talk. You listen." But she still has to take a full breath before she can put this out in the open. "I think… I think i know what this is."
And just like that, she has their full attention. Even Oliver's glassy eyes seem to be more focused. Her worry for him pricks at her before she can remind herself that there is no time!
"I'm not sure. I thought I recognized the symptoms when the doc told me about them, but i dismissed it out of hand, because… because it's supposed to be goddamned impossible." Sara says, shoving one hand in her hair to get it off her face, for the first time letting her frustration tinge her voice. She clamps down on that fast though. She needs to be in control right now. "There is no way I can be sure until Felicity wakes up."
"Until?"
Oliver's voice is so expressionless it cuts.
"Yeah, until." Sara says, her voice softening. "If this is what I think it is, she should wake up in a couple of days, tops."
Oliver closes his eyes, tries to take a deep breath. His left thumb rubs against his index finger incessantly, and even if she knew literally nothing else about him, that would have told her of the depth of his anxiety.
"Sara…" and if before her name had sounded like a cry for help, now it sounded like exhaustion. "Start talking."
"In the League, they call it 'Lilith's gift'. It's… some kind of poison. I think that's what Felicity has been infected with."
"The docs said it was a virus." Digg notes. "And that they'd never seen anything like it."
Sara shakes her head, lips pursed irritably. "It's possible. I don't know shit about its biology."
Roy's eyes are wide and disbelieving. "What the hell do they have to do with Felicity anyway?"
But the answer was self-explanatory. It could be the League, or it couldn't be. Maybe someone else had gotten hold of their poison. Maybe it had something to do with Felicity, and maybe it didn't.
"Lilith?" Digg says as he sits down heavily on a banged up chair that doesn't even look like it can sustain his weight. "You mean like the demon?"
"In Nanda Parbat, her story is older than that. Lilith is… the feminine aspect of God; the Mother of Demons or whatever. It's old religion, they don't practice it anymore. Bottom line: it's some kind of poison, or virus and I don't know exactly what it is or what it does. Over there they say that… that it changes you."
Oliver takes one step closer. "Changes you how?"
"I don't know!"
Two steps and he's is right in front of her. Anger focuses him - Sara knows that. But it also unhinges him.
He's already breathing too shallow.
Caution reminds her of what it could mean for him, to take one shock too many.
"Changes you how, Sara!"
"I don't know, okay!" She grits out, trying to remain steady. "I am not even supposed to know this much; nobody is. The only reason I do is because Nyssa tells me things sometimes, even things she's not supposed to. … And because stories of death usually tend to get around."
Oliver turns away, rubbing a hand over his face, as if that will help him make sense of things. Roy widens his stance, like he's bracing for impact and Digg pins her with a stern look, expectant.
Sara checks her watch. Forty minutes.
"There used to be this ritual in the League. If a warrior was proved worthy, 'they would be bestowed Lilith's gift and they would sow death on the world'. Or something." The words felt foreign on her lips, coarse when spoken in english, like they had no place to be said aloud in a tongue that couldn't encompass their meaning. Sara had never been a believer, but she can't control the chill that goes up her spine.
"Most people think it's just a story but Nyssa… Nyssa told me that it used to happen once, and that the Ra's that lived before her father banned it, because apparently the only ones that survived the poison long enough to wake up from 'shallow death' were the women."
The words fall from her lips like stones and Sara watches the effect of the ripples they make on her friends' faces. Oliver goes even paler, dry lips parted in such acute shock that she has trouble looking at him in the face.
"So what does that mean?" John asks, confusion clouding his face ever darker.
"According to the stories, those who wake up, they come back changed. And there is something about a blood price… I… it's all I know."
Sara keeps track of Oliver as she talks but he seems frozen, sightless.
Digg just shakes his head, devoid of words.
"You realize how you sound, right?" Roy deadpans.
Sara turns furious eyes at him. "I sound fucking unhinged. Yes, I know. But I've seen things that make my definition of impossible a little wider than yours, Roy. Felicity's wound looks exactly like the paintings I've seen on the walls of Nanda Parbat's catacombs. There is no poison that i know of that could do that."
Thirty-eight minutes. Sara's heart starts picking up the pace. She needs to go, but she can't leave!
"Even if this made a single shred of sense - why would the League target Felicity? She is no one to them."
Sara sighs. Bless John Diggle and his ability to cut through bullshit.
"This isn't the League." Sara's answer is immediate and final. This she doesnt doubt, not for a moment.
"You just said…"
"I know what I said, Digg. The poison is of the League, but nobody in the League would ever dare to even dream of doing this. If Ra's al Ghul ever found out…"
Sara's words die in her mouth. God, she doesn't even want to think about it. There is a reason they call him Demon, and Sara doesn't want her friends to ever find out what that is. Ever.
"He has killed countless for secrets that were much less precious to him than this." Sara says slowly. She needs them to understand this. "No, this isn't the League …But it's someone close enough to know its secrets, and desperate enough to use them without Ra's' permission."
Oliver eyes catch hers and hold. They're bloodshot and shining of such a bright blue that it's as if flames have been lit inside his skull.
"Who were you hunting, Sara?"
Sara does it quickly, like ripping off a band aid. "Malcolm Merlyn."
They all look at her in the same moment, within the same breath. She'd expected it.
"Malcolm Merlyn is dead." Oliver rasps, sudden fire burning away the numbness. "I killed him. Digg was there."
Sara looks at him without blinking.
"A few months back, the League was informed that he was alive. They tracked him down. Three days ago the scout sent to Starling failed to make contact, so I was sent to investigate, because I know the city… and you. I didn't find the scout's body, but I did find his hideout. And these."
She hands them the photos. Diggle and Roy crowd on them immediately. Oliver barely glances at Merlyn's face on those pictures before he closes his eyes and rubs the heels of his hands against them. He's pacing again.
Sara clenches her jaw, working the words in her mouth before she says them.
"Merlyn resurfaces in Starling, a League scout goes missing and now Felicity gets infected with one of the League's most lethal secrets. I'm not a fan of coincidences, but even if I was, I wouldn't buy this for one."
"Why?" Oliver asks without looking up from the floor, hands linked behind his neck. "Why do this? Why Felicity?"
She wants to reach out to him, get him to stop, to breathe, but she knows he'd flinch away. He doesn't want comfort. He wants answers and on this Sara doesn't have any.
"I don't know. Malcolm is a slippery fuck, but there is no way in hell that even someone like him could use this to his advantage. This isn't a safety net – it's a god damned death warrant. If so much as a whisper of this gets to the wrong ears…" Sara gulps her nerves down, grasping at the last straws of her calm, willing her voice to be steady. "Ra's al Ghul will kill everyone, Ollie - starting with Felicity. Everyone involved, everyone suspected. Anyone who helped her; anyone who ever so much as smiled at her, if he feels like it."
The heaviness that her words leave behind is filled with a strange, restless kind of energy. Or maybe it's was just her own tingling hysteria coloring her perception, Sara can't tell at the moment.
"There's no coming back from this – it's suicide." She says, almost to herself. "Which is where the whole thing stops making sense, because that's not Merlyn's style."
Oliver's eyes harden to cold ice, hands falling to his side and tightening into fists. He is almost vibrating on the edge of motion, but can't seem to make himself move.
Sara knows the feeling.
"Why is the League after him?" Digg demands, throwing the pictures on the table, disgust lining his face.
"The League has a code and Merlyn broke it despite being released with the promise of upholding it. Which is why he is going to meet death while roasting slowly until he feels the fire all the five hundred and three souls he had no right to take."
Roy's eyes never have been wider. But there is anger in them too.
"What, because Ra's-whoever didn't give Merlyn permission to kill us? Is that what defines right and wrong in the League?" he asks, indignant. And Sara understands, she does, because it was his home that Merlyn tried to level, but that's not the point right now.
"Yes, Roy. Exactly that," Sara stresses. "Do you understands who you're dealing with now?"
"Is there any kind of way Malcolm could use this to get out go the hunt?" Oliver asks, without looking up from the spot on the floor he's been staring at for the past five minutes.
"No, I told you – if he did this, and I think he did, he's digging his own grave. Besides, reckoning for the Undertaking isn't something he can escape or trick his way around. Only Merlyn's blood will pay for what he did."
Sara sees it the moment Oliver stops breathing. It's just about at the same time when Digg's shoulders tense even more and Roy blanches.
"Thea…" his sister's name escaped Oliver's lips in a whisper.
Sara frowns. "What about her?"
Oliver's eyes are wide and alarmed. "Would they hurt her to get to him?"
"Why would they…" But then it hits her and she swears between her teeth heavily. Sara braces herself against the back of one of the chairs. She hasn't even thought about it.
"They don't know. If they find out… they might." She says around a heavy breath. "They might, but it won't come to that."
Oliver starts pacing again, from one corner of the room to another. The movement is so startling because he's been moving at half speed ever since Digg took Felicity from his arms.
"I have to get to Thea," he says urgently, and Sara can see the panic setting in. Her own heart is starting to have trouble maintaining regular beats, as the horrifying realizations start to piece themselves together.
"Yes. And I'll deal with Merlyn," Sara reiterates. "I'll find him, Ollie, I promise. I'll find him before the League does and I'll kill him."
Everyone stiffens momentarily, both Roy and Diggle eyeing Oliver.
"We don't know his plan yet." Digg cautions.
Sara gives him a shuttered look, all steel. "When I get my hands on him, we'll hear about the songs he'll be ready to sing me. Until then, the plan is to catch him before the League does."
"You think he'll try to contact Thea?" Digg asks, taking a step in Oliver's direction, who seems unable to answer, so Sara does it for him.
"Come on Digg. She's young, angry, completely isolated and recuperating from heavy trauma," Sara ticks off, ignoring the way Oliver's face scrunches up at her dry description. "Why wouldn't he go find her? She's primed for manipulation. And Merlyn is just sick enough to do it."
Oliver blanches.
"He wouldn't hurt her," he says, voice low with both trepidation and the vibrating promise of danger. Beneath it, Sara can read his fear like he'd just handed it to her; it sounds more like he's trying to convince himself. "She's his daughter."
"Yeah, she is," Sara sighs. "Tommy was his son too. How caring a parent do you remember Malcolm being with him?"
Oliver finches, upper lip curling in a silent snarl.
"Would she tell you if he already had tried to get to her?" Digg pushes. Oliver shakes his head, gulping visibly.
"I don't know. I haven't spoken to her in two weeks. She's not answering my calls. I don't know." His voice fades off at the end.
Sara starts towards him but he holds a hand up to hold her off, exactly as she'd thought he would.
"Oliver, breathe." Sara says calmly. He just shakes his head.
This time when she goes to him and he tries to hold her off, Sara just takes his hand in both of hers and pulls him toward her.
He's hyperventilating.
"Sit down." Sara tells him firmly.
"Don't!" Oliver growls. It would be threatening if he didn't look like he was about to shake apart if anyone so much as brushed against him too forcefully.
"Sit the fuck down, Ollie, come on. Please." She pulls him with her and though he resists the first moment, when Sara doesn't let go, Oliver follows. He almost crumbles against the wall, sitting so hard and gracelessly on the floor he might as well have fallen. He's been keeping it together by sheer force of will and movement, and like a shark, now that he's stopped he probably feels like the walls of the room are collapsing around him.
Roy and Digg who file out of the room so silently she barely hears them.
She sits between his bent knees, puts a hand on the back of his neck. It's slick with sweat.
"Breathe."
"I don't fucking need this." he says, hissing the words between tightly gritted teeth. "I need to get to Thea. I need… I… Feli…" The words end in a barely suppressed groan that curves him in, like he can't take it.
"What you need is a moment to breathe through this. You've been on the edge of a panic attack ever since…"
His eyes close and he hangs his head, almost as if just think back to it is too much, so Sara doesn't say it. She takes a breath instead. Thirty minutes.
Fuck!
"You need to ride this out. At least for now." She tells him instead. The bitter laugh that leaves him is hurtful, but she can deal with it. Sara takes his hand, puts it just under her throat, so that his fingers can keep track of her pulse.
"We're going to sit here, just you and me. And we're going to breathe until your heart slows down and you don't feel like you're dying anymore, because you're not. And Felicity is not either."
The sound he makes is the closest she's ever heart to a whimper and Sara grits her teeth.
"I'm fine." Oliver bites out the words like he resents them. As if saying it would just make him fine.
"Don't. Don't do that." Sara warns. "You always do that. You pretend things are fine, but they're not. And you can't pretend right now, Ollie. We can't afford it. So say it."
He just shakes his head, little tremors going through his shoulders.
"Felicity almost died. Say it." Sara insists, and though her voice is firm, the thumb that draws slow patterns on his neck is gentle, grounding him, she keeps the hold around his wrist gentle too.
"Felicity almost died, but she's going to wake up. It happened and it's not fine. You're scared and it's fucking you up. But to deal with it you need to say it first, Ollie. "
Oliver slumps even further, his forehead falling on her shoulder. It's not exactly saying the words, admitting it, but it's something. He takes gulping breaths and she tells him to hold it for a few seconds. He keeps sucking shallow breaths so fast that barely any oxygen is getting to his lungs. No wonder he feels like he's drowning.
Sara keeps rubbing the back of his neck.
At least there are silver linings to the fact that our nightmares match.
"She's not Shado, or Tommy, or me." She says calmly, making her voice as steady and reassuring as she can, though neither of them comes naturally. "She's not you mom. She's Felicity and she's still here, and we both have such fucked up shit to deal with, but I'm still here too. And i know it's not fair, but we need you. You can't let this drag you down. Just say it."
She can feel his tears through the fabric of her T-shirt. But his breathing is steadier now, and he's not shaking quite so much anymore.
"What difference will that make?"
"Let's just try it."
Oliver takes a ragged breath.
"She died in my arms." he says flatly.
"But she's not dead though. You need to say that too." Sara encourages.
"She's not alive either, Sara."
"Yet. She'll wake up." And Sara does believe that. She has to.
"She wanted to go home and i couldn't do anything." He insists, his voice getting more hoarse with every word. "She stopped breathing in my arms, and i couldn't do anything!"
"We can do something now." Sara reminds him evenly, but she knows that's not the point. The point is standing by helpless while someone you love gets hurts. When they look at you full of despair and you just stand there, a useless sack of shit, because you can't do anything about it and it kills you, but you just don't die! Death, but without the perks of it being fucking over already.
The point is that both Oliver and Sara had learned that anything is better than that. Anything else will hurt less. Being terrified is better than being helpless. Being in pain is better than being helpless.
Anything, rather than being watching.
Literally any single thing, just to be able to do something, even if it's stupid. Even if it kills you.
"I'm so tired Sara," even his whisper shows it, draggin fresh tears from him, catching on his words. Sara's eyes sting. "I'm so tired of losing everyone I love."
Sara slumps into him, her forehead on his shoulder.
"Yeah. I know." Sara admits in a whisper.
She knows that exhaustion Oliver is feeling. It's dragged at her bones so often. She too needs a place to rest for a while. So they stay that way, like two brackets holding all their deep dark secrets. The silence that blooms between them is almost restful; Perceptible the way emptiness can be only after too much screaming.
Sara takes a deep breath, exhales it slowly. She takes his hand because she wants to hold on to something, and she's happy to find that it's not shaking anymore nor is it quite as clammy as before.
"You've still got John and Roy. Thea too, she'll come around. You'll find her and you'll fix things, both of you, because you love each other. And you still have me, Ollie. I'm still here." She wants him to remember that. She's not much, but she's all she's got and they've been that before for each other. It's familiar solace. "I'm still here and you have to trust me. I know what I'm doing."
"I trust you." he breathes out. An exhausted truth, but an immediate one.
"We'll work together and we'll get through this."
Oliver is so silent, so still, that Sara can practically see the hope slipping through his fingers like sand.
She knows what he's thinking.
"She'll wake up."
He stops breathing for a moment so her fingers stop rubbing the back of his neck and press on his skin hard enough to remind him to take a breath.
When he does, it's harsh.
"What if she doesn't?"
"She will." Sara insists, with all the stubbornness she is capable of.
Oliver just shakes his head.
"And then what? Merlyn, the League…"
"Give yourself a break Ollie," Sara snaps, but doesn't move her head from his shoulder. "One problem at a time. We'll burn those bridges when we come to them."
He huffs. It's almost a laugh. Well, it's twice removed from a laugh's second cousin, but it's close enough.
"I don't think that's how the saying goes, Sara."
"I don't give a shit."
Oliver squeezes her hand tight and she squeezes back.
"We'll protect her." He says then, and it's as if he's saying to himself. "We'll protect them both."
Protect them…
Sara's wants to say yes. Yes, of course we'll protect them. Yesh, because she loves Felicity too and she'd do anything for Thea as well, because she's Oliver's lifeline as much as Laurel is Sara's. Yes, because at this point, she just wants Oliver to be okay and is ready to give him anything for it. Almost.
That 'almost' stops Sara from saying yes.
It reminds her of Laurel telling her with a glin in her eye that she'd taken up taekwondo now, as well as kickboxing and that it was helping her deal with a lot of shit, as well as helping her actually hold her own for a full five minutes against her League-trained little sister. She remembers the punch her sister had landed and God, that smile afterwards, so brilliant. So fucking proud.
"I was actually thinking more along the lines of teache them to protect themselves there, Ollie." Sara finally says. Protecting women in a world where men think nothing of hurting them doesn't really help anyone.
"I thought you were trying to help me deal with my anxiety, not give me reasons for it."
Sara shrugs. "Tometo, tomato."
It a bit longer until he speaks again. By the time he does, Sara knows he's lingering just because he can, till the last moment.
"You have to go, don't you?" It's not even a question at this point.
"Yeah."
He signs, but then nods. "Okay."
Sara moves her hand from his neck to his shoulders and they straighten almost at the same time, to look at each other. She wipes the blotchy parts of her face carelessly, just as Oliver passes both hands over his face.
"Remember, we have a plan." Sara says, deliberately slow. "You get to Thea, bring her here and keep her safe. I get to Merlyn, find out what he knows. No deviations unless discussed, no stupid shit allowed."
Oliver just looks at her. But Sara doesn't let up. She knows he has a tendency to make rash decisions when he's feeling overwhelmed and they really can't afford that right now.
Finally, Oliver nods. And then he sighs.
"I have no idea who to make Thea come back here. She doesn't want to, and frankly she shouldn't have to."
Sara stands up and holds out a hand to him, to pull him to his feet too.
"She'll have to. It's not a matter of choice, it's for her safety."
"Yeah, and how do it get her to see that?"
Sara looks at him with a confused frown. "Just tell her the truth, Ollie."
The notion seems to stagger him.
"I can't tell her I'm the Arrow, Sara. I…"
Sara huffs. "Look, it's your choice on that front. But at this point, it's her life on the line so she deserves to know the truth about why, at least. How you repair your relationship with her is up to you."
He looks away, does not seem the least bit reassured.
"I can't leave Felicity alone here." it's almost as if it has just occurred to him, and part of it would be funny, if he weren't so fucking tragic. He can't fathom anyone else wanting her as safe as he does so it probably doesn't occur to him that Felicity will be just as safe with Digg and Roy and the freaking Flash guarding over her.
When Sara points this out to him as they open the door and get into the corridor, he just blinks and then shakes his head.
"Right. Of course."
Digg and Roy are just down the hall, looking into Felicity's room. Everything suddenly seems to fall into place and that small angle of quiet that Sara had rested on for those few moments before shatters completely.
This is real. This is happening.
Their friend almost died. They don't know if she'll wake up and even if she does, they don't know what will happen to her.
Sara balls her hands into fists, grits her teeth. Whatever it is, she's going to be where she belongs: between her family and whatever is coming for them.
"She's stable, for now." Digg says as he leans back on the chair.
Sara nods.
"Good. that's… that's good new." but she doesn't know what else to say so she drops it. "Digg, I have a couple of flight plans and patterns that need analyzing. You think Lyla would let me borrow some ARGUS tech-support peeps for a few hours while I'm en route?"
Digg gives her a look that is both unimpresssed and amused at the same time. "For this, Lyla would let you borrow ARGUS."
Sara manages a small smile and passes him the USB with the information.
"Let's trace Thea's phone too while we're at it, just to be sure," Digg adds and throws a careful look at Oliver, who nods stiffly.
"Ok then. I'm going now. You guys know how to contact me."
John nods. "I'll call you when I have something."
Sara turns to Oliver, lays a hand on his forearm and tightens her grip, hoping to be able to press her feelings his skin with just her touch.
Then she walks out.