Sometimes when Sara fought, everything else went away. Her hard-earned muscle memory took over. She found the ideal headspace of an assassin, devoid of any emotion. There was no bloodlust or anger. There was only her body, the enemy, and the terrain.
Hours passed like this. She moved from building to building alone, targeting reinforcements where they waited in basements and cellars. Because the robots weren't sentient, her brawls began to follow a pattern. It felt almost like training, rather than a battle with real lives on the line. Occasionally she varied her methods to try and find some way to disable the robots completely instead of simply hitting them with her electrocuted staff.
Finally, Iris caught her attention through her comm. "Supergirl figured figured out how to disable them, White Canary."
Sara dodged into a stairwell and raised her forefinger to the speaker. "What's the plan?"
"Wild Dog and Mr. Terrific are coming your way. You three need to drive them out into the streets," Iris ordered.
Sara moved up to a rooftop and waited until she saw two men on the ground, one in a hockey mask and the other carrying with an armful of silver spheres. She regretted her lack of gear. The silk she used to carry in the league would have been perfect for a dramatic entrance to intimidate some of the newbies. Instead, she whistled to catch their attention.
"I drove them out to the main level of this house," she shouted. "Get them on the streets and then meet me next door."
Rene and Curtis fought well from what she observed at a distance, but Sara stayed one house ahead of them. She had a system and they had a system- there was no need to try and force a team up.
Supergirl flew above them and contained the robots in the same general area with her heat vision. Sara was toward the end of the street when she heard a not-quite-familiar-enough cry and whirled around.
A woman in black was screeching, and the robots shorted out in waves before her. In the open air, Sara was out of range of the waves of sound, but she clapped her hands over her ears anyway.
It couldn't be. It really, truly couldn't be, but she darted toward the figure anyway. Screw the plan. She had to know.
Rene snagged her by the arm as she ran past him. "Hey, hey, hey!" he yelled.
Normally, she would taken him out, but instead she paused and spat out "It's not-"
"It's not your sister," he assured, and Sara felt her heart plummet, not enough to break it, but close. Before the devastation could fully hit, she turned it into anger. Her chest became a conveyor belt churning it out in bursts, and she sprinted back toward the last few houses.
Once all the robots were out on the streets, Sara reached for the microphone button. "Overwatch!" she yelled. "Where's Green Arrow?!"
There was a long silence on the other line, and when Felicity finally answered she was all business. "We need need to regroup back in Central City. The Atom is on the Waverider coming to pick you three up. Green Arrow is already onboard. Supergirl can bring Black Canary back when they finish."
"Okay," Sara responded.
"Are you alright?" Felicity asked.
"You should have told me," Sara said.
"Sorry. Your father- he knows. He's the one who let her use the name. We would have asked but it's hard to contact you, you know?"
"I know," Sara said, attempting to soften her tone.
She joined Rene and Curtis on the ground and they moved out to an open spot where the ship could land. They both made light conversation between themselves, intentionally giving her some space, and Sara felt a quick pang of regret for how standoffish she was being.
When the Waverider landed, Oliver was waiting for her in the cargo bay. Sara directed Rene and Curtis toward the front of the ship. "Tell Ray we'll be up in a second," she instructed.
"I'm sorry," Oliver told her as soon as they had turned the corner. "I know how that must have felt."
It wasn't a platitude. Oliver did know. Sara herself had often been the cause. "Who is she?" Sara asked.
"Her name is Dinah Drake. She's a police officer, and a meta. That cry- it's all her. That and an amplifier Cisco built."
"Felicity said my dad signed off?"
Oliver nodded. "Laurel wanted it to be something that was passed on."
"I didn't know that," Sara admitted. "We didn't have the chance to talk about that kind of thing."
"It was right before," Oliver said. She met his gaze, and it was raw. Everything was raw between them, and she didn't know why. Most of it had scabbed over years before, and nothing was different on her end.
Sara held up her hand, frantically blinking back tears. "We should- some other time. We need to... Felicity said there were things you needed to talk to me about. Was that all?"
Oliver sat down on a crate. Sara stayed standing, arms crossed, too anxious to settle down. "There was this man- Adrian Chase. He called himself Prometheus. He lured me to the island, with everyone. Nyssa, your dad, the whole team. My son and his mother. Everyone's fine, but it was a close thing. He hooked up explosives through the whole island. The whole- you know how big it was."
"Was?" she asked.
"It's gone. The whole island is ash. He's dead. I didn't do it- he did it to himself, to trigger the explosives."
Sara watched Oliver. His shoulders were still tense. "We'll be back at Central City in a second. Please just tell me everything. Rip it off like a band-aid," she urged.
He shook his head. "Slade. He helped me. We're on- not good terms, but better. I know you never got to know him without the serum."
"I met him," Sara reminded him. "For about a half hour. Are you sure you can trust him?"
"I'm not planning on making it a habit," Oliver responded, and she rolled her eyes at his non-answer.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"You know about the other earths, right? Do you know about the dopplegangers?"
"A little," Sara told him.
"There's this woman from another Earth who's been antagonizing us for a while. She showed up last year and claimed to be Laurel- she said you messed with time and saved her. It wasn't our Laurel- we call her Black Siren."
"What was she trying to do?" Sara asked.
"Kill us all. Or that's what she said. There's bits and pieces in there that seem like they could be good, but she's not Laurel," Oliver insisted. "It's her face but it's not her life. It's not Laurel."
"Dad knows?" Sara clarified.
"He knows," Oliver assured. "That's everything I can think of right now. Do you have anything for me?"
Sara snorted a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I had the chance to kill Damien Darhk. I didn't. We wiped his memory and put him right back on track to kill her."
Sara hadn't been planning on ever telling Oliver about that, but it made her feel better to have something to fire back with.
Oliver's forehead hit his hands and he was silent for a long moment. Finally, he spoke. "I know you wouldn't have done that if you had any other choice. You don't have to explain it to me."
"All right." Sara sat down hard on the crate next to him, prying loose the tight grip she'd had on her staff. "I'm going to hug you but- later. I want to have a normal conversation first"
"Deal," Oliver agreed. The Waverider rattled to a stop.
"Ugh," Sara groaned as superheroes filed back into the cargo bay. "We need to get those brakes looked at."
Sara ended up taxiing people back and forth on the Waverider for most of the second day of action. There was a scary moment that evening when it looked like Spartan might be down. Sara only got looped in toward the end of the crisis when they decided they needed her to intervene with Gideon's tech. It was touch-and-go for about fifteen minutes, but in the end he was okay. She took Dig to an ARGUS safehouse where Lyla could meet him once everything was over.
After that, Ray took the Waverider and Sara grabbed the jumpship. She caught about an hour of sleep before headquarters woke her up and asked her to go guard the entrance of the volcano.
"By the way," Felicity added. "The volcano isn't actually a volcano. Turns out it's made of petrified alien feces."
"So the lava isn't actually lava?" Sara asked.
"Oh, no. The lava is definitely lava. If that non-volcano erupts, we're still very screwed."
"So is there any good news?"
"Well, right now there's five of our people inside the shit volcano trying to infiltrate a secret layer. And at the moment, I'm not currently asking you to go in. Just hang out near the tunnels at the base and whack anyone who tries to get past you. Also, let me know if you hear, see, or smell anything unusual."
"You want to know if there's anything unusual about the shit volcano?"
"That would be helpful, yes. Gotta go."
All Sara got from the headquarters over the next twelve hours was periodic check-ins and a request to please not attack Curtis when he arrived to join the rest of Team Volcano.
"Anyone dead?" she checked as he moved past her.
He flashed her a thumbs up. "All good."
Finally, after the sun set and Sara's visibility was way down, Iris caught her attention.
"White Canary, Speedy's going to take over for you. We need you back at headquarters."
"On it," Sara responded.
Iris and Felicity looked nearly as beaten down as she felt when she walked through the entrance of the cortex.
"You're limping," Felicity told her, barely looking up from the computer.
Sara shrugged. "Fell off a ledge fighting some asshole robot."
Felicity typed for a few moments before her forehead creased and she glanced back at Sara. "You never used to flinch."
It took a moment to figure out what Felicity was talking about, but then Sara remembered. " Pain and I came to an understanding a while back ," she had said, bent over a table as Oliver stitched up her lower back."
Those scars were gone. Most of her scars were gone, and the new ones that layered her skin carried gentler memories with them.
"It's been a long time," she responded. "What's going on?"
"Ray and Nate are on their way back," Iris informed her. "Some alarm is going off and Ray said Gideon is worried about it."
Sara hovered over the board, eavesdropping on the comm conversations for a few moments before Nate appeared, Ray right behind him. "Gideon found them all at the same time. There's no obvious link but they've never popped up so quickly before. I don't know if it's because of the spear or what we're doing right now, but-"
She held up a hand to shoo them off. "Okay, okay. We're on it, just go figure out what we're dealing with."
Felicity ended her conversation with Cisco. "Vixen and Heatwave are still on Earth-Three with Vibe and Jesse Quick retrieving the people we evacuated there," she informed Sara. "Do you want to me to pull them out?"
"Not yet," Sara said. "Not until Ray and Nate come back."
Iris killed her comm as well. "How's Wally?" she asked Felicity. "I haven't had the chance to check in with him in a while."
"Cisco didn't say anything, so I assume he's doing fine," Felicity assured. "I still can't believe he's that kid who tried to tag along during the invasion last year."
Iris smiled. "Good. Yeah, we should have started training him earlier. We just never thought he'd have to step up like this so soon."
Felicity placed her hand on Iris' shoulder. "I'm really glad everyone's okay. We've lost too much. I don't think I could take anything else right now."
Iris nodded, took a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry," she said when she had collected herself.
"You're fine," Sara assured her. "I'm so sorry about Barry, Iris."
"Thanks. I don't think you all have anything to do with the speed force, but if you all ever get involved with it-"
"I'll give you a call," Sara promised.
"Sara!" Ray called, poking his head back into the Cortex. "Sorry. We just got another alert. The year zero."
Felicity slammed her hand down on the comm. "Vixen. You and Heatwave need to get back here ASAP. You all need to go save Jesus, maybe. Or, actually-" She turned to Sara. "Um, please don't kill a religious figurehead."
Sara heaved a sigh and shrugged. "Probably not. We'll figure it out as we go along."
"So the usual plan?" Ray asked. He waved to Felicity. "I'll go get Martin and Jax. Meet us at the Waverider, Captain?"
"Yeah," Sara muttered, casting another glance across the monitor, looking for any loose ends they hadn't yet figured out how to wrap up.
"Be careful!" Felicity called after Ray as he left.
Can you pull up Oliver?" Sara asked Iris. "I don't know how to work all of this"
Iris nodded and fiddled with the comms. "Green Arrow, I've got White Canary," she announced after a moment.
We have to go," Sara told him, leaning into the microphone. "Something's happening with the timeline. Are you okay without us?"
There was heavy breathing and crash from his end, but when he responded his tone was calm. "We're fine. Do you need backup?"
"Uh..." Sara responded. Truthfully, up until that moment it had never occurred to her to ask for outside help.
Felicity rolled her eyes and leaned in. "Green Arrow, how is Guardian's arm? Supergirl mentioned that something happened."
"There's an arrow in it. Not mine."
"Yeah, it better not be."
There was another crash and some static which blocked out Oliver's response. He tuned back in after half a minute of silence on both ends. "We're fine. Guardian's fine. Agent Danvers is taking him back to HQ. White Canary, are you leaving now?"
"Yeah," Sara responded, and found herself at a loss of what to say.
He saved her from her awkward moment of hesitation. "Stay out of trouble."
"You, too."
His line cut out. Felicity shut it off and pulled Sara into a hug. "Be safe. Keep Ray safe. And the rest of them, okay?"
"I'm trying," Sara responded honestly.
The disruption to the timeline missed the birth of Christ by a couple of months, so they were able to set things straight relatively quickly. Sara did a headcount as they stumbled back through the main hall, making sure they hadn't managed to forget anyone or pick up any strays (the latter seemed to happen more often than the former, oddly enough).
"Is everyone alive? Anyone hemorrhaging blood? Anyone traumatized?"
All of the groans or grunts she received in response seemed vaguely affirmative.
"Ray's definitely concussed," Jax added.
Ray blinked slowly for a moment. "Did you just tattle on me?"
"Go to the med bay, Ray," Sara ordered. "Please don't wake me up unless something's on fire."
She hovered around long enough to watch everyone head toward the med bay (Ray and Nate), the kitchen (Mick), or their rooms (Stein, Jax, and Amaya). Then, she went to her own room and changed out of leather into cotton. She lowered herself into bed slowly, all of her aches hitting her at once. She fell asleep gazing at her corkboard, somehow feeling more distant from everyone on it than she ever had before.
On the island, there is rubble. Ash. Deeper down, bones. Of Robert Queen, whose grave she saw only once. Of Shado, resting in a space that should have been hers.
Sara was buried at sea. There is still some part of her out there, halfway between the shore of Lian Yu and where a freighter once anchored. The bones of a girl she no longer is scatter the floor of the ocean. They were dropped there one by one until Anatoly Knyazev looked her up-and-down and asked "When did you get so scary?"
Some debris must have scattered into the ocean, in the explosion. Ivo was never buried. She spent many years imagining animals tearing his corpse limb from limb. But now that there is no purgatory, his bones will find any piece of her they can. They will sink to the bottom of the ocean and wrap around hers at grotesque angles, trapping her there forever.
She will never rest.
Sara bolted awake in her bed outside of space and time, knife in hand. Ivo was dead, and he could not find her on the Waverider.
(But Malcolm did.)
(But death did.)
(But grief did.)