Previously on "Black Bird; Green Arrow":
"Peter Fleming is on the list," Diggle repeated.
"I think I've got a pretty good idea why," Oliver went over to the computer and pulled up Orwell's blog. "Take a look at this. Orwell suspects him of everything from trying to kill Palm City's Secretary of Prisons to illegally arresting and detaining citizens."
"Peter Fleming, you have failed this city."
"There was another murder last night," Quentin replied. "Same M.O. as Hunt's; taken out with black arrows… Your story checked out. Although you left out a few details—like the fact that you were too busy shaking down Peter Fleming to have killed Hunt."
"I think this is what got Mr. Steele kidnapped," Felicity announced as she handed a slim brown-covered volume to the brunette.
"The League was manipulating these people for its own agenda—and now the ones that Oliver Queen hasn't knocked off are being picked off by some sociopath trying to get his attention," Faraday concluded.
Chapter Nine: The Thunder Rolls
"You're welcome," the Cape rasped the following evening, before turning to face the figure that had tried to sneak up behind him. "For rescuing your stepfather," he elaborated. "You're welcome."
"I hadn't actually said thank you," Oliver pointed out, not bothering to disguise his voice, but leaving his hood pulled low over his face. When the Cape merely stood there waiting, he went on. "Fine, yes, thank you, although I doubt you did it for me. How did you know where to find Walter, anyway?"
"You're not the only one with tech support," Vince smirked, unknowingly reminding Queen that the billionaire might be about to lose Felicity to ARK Corporation.
"I'm sure your expert needed a lead to go on," the archer prompted, trying to remain patient.
"You're right. That list you've been picking your victims from? Did anyone ever tell you who wrote it?" the Cape asked. "And yes, I know you got it from your father, but did he tell you what the list was for or what he was mixed up in?"
Oliver glared at the other vigilante. His hands twitched towards his quiver, as he longed to put an arrow through the person talking so cavalierly about his father.
"Don't you dare," Queen warned the other man. "Whatever my father may have done, he sacrificed himself for me—and I have done nothing since my return but work to give back to this city whatever he may have taken—"
"I figured as much," the cop interrupted him. "I don't doubt that in his final moments he asked you to help him make amends, but he was clearly pretty vague on the details. Your father was a member of a group called the League of Assassins. It's a society that destroys entire cities. Don't feel bad; I'd never heard of it before either."
"Actually, I know that name," Oliver's eyes glazed over, as he lost himself in a memory, full of black-clad figures and the distant sound of waves.
"Seriously, am I the only one who'd never heard of these people?" Vince complained, rousing the other blond from his reverie. "Go on, then, how did you know about them?"
"You know the supposedly deserted island I was stranded on for five years?" the Hood asked. "It was full of the League's ninjas."
The Cape blinked, and then whistled.
"Ninjas, you mean as in sneaking up on you invisibly and then beating the crap out of you ninjas? And here I thought Tom Hanks had it bad in Castaway." Faraday wondered why the League had bothered with the list in the first place if they had ninjas, but then he supposed you could never have too many assets. "I guess that explains why you learned how to fight," he continued.
"Well, the ninjas weren't exactly going to drive themselves off the island," the Hood replied. It took him the better part of five years to defeat the League faction that had inhabited the island. Now he returned home only to find that another faction had already taken root in Starling City. "Somebody up there hates me," he muttered. "So the list is of local League members?"
"Hardly, that list was full of names the League assumed it could exploit to destroy Starling City."
"No," the Hood shook his head. "No, that's—that can't be right. You're mistaken."
"I believe that you started your crusade with the best of intentions, arguably better than mine were, but you've been going about it all wrong. The fact that a person's name is on that list doesn't mean that that's who you need to concentrate on—though it probably wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on them. All this time you've been looking to that list for guidance, you haven't realized there are bigger fish out there."
"What are you saying—that you found Walter by thinking outside of the box?" Oliver asked drily.
"We found him by asking the right question."
"And what was that?" the shipwreck survivor asked.
"Who did your father work with in the League of Assassins?"
"I don't think you should be here, Malcolm," Moira Queen said as the man brushed past her and into her home. "Walter has only just come home. We don't need to arouse any suspicions, do we?"
"I'll be brief, then. I've been monitoring the team's progress and we're ahead of schedule. The Undertaking will be over before the week is out. Think you can keep Walter from interfering with our plans for that long?" Merlyn demanded.
"I'll handle it," Moira regarded him coolly. Lowering her voice, she added, "in case you've forgotten, I'm not the one who let him escape."
"I admit there was a miscalculation on my part," Malcolm conceded grudgingly. "But factoring this Cape into the equation won't change matters. No one can stop us now."
"Indeed, well, if that's all, Malcolm, I believe I have a husband to attend to. You know the way out."
She maintained her composure until the door clicked shut behind the Magician.
She managed to make it into the parlor before collapsing on a sofa, and was still slumped there when Thea arrived.
"Mom, what's wrong?" her daughter asked, concern written all over her face as she took a seat next to her.
"It's—you're too young to—"
"Whatever the problem is, don't you dare tell me I'm too young to understand," the teenager interrupted her. Her fiery spirit heightened her unnerving resemblance to Merlyn. (Sometimes it felt like a miracle that no one had discovered her true lineage. But, Moira consoled herself, this was her daughter, not Malcolm's. She and Robert had raised Thea together and Robert would always be her father.)
"Mom, you can tell me anything," Thea insisted.
How naïve she seemed to Moira! She could never tell her daughter that she had conspired with Malcolm to have Walter kidnapped, never mind the plan to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of their fellow citizens. She struggled to find something sufficiently innocuous to say.
"Alright, suppose you got involved with the wrong people," Moira began. She took a deep breath. "And you learned a secret."
"What kind of secret?" Thea chewed on her lower lip. She hated secrets, but lately it seemed that everyone around her had one.
"The kind that could get people killed. The kind that could get your family killed if these people thought you had betrayed them," she grasped her daughter's hands in her own. "Thea, I would sooner die than let anything happen to you or Oliver."
"Or Walter," Thea added.
"Or Walter, of course," Moira choked back a sob.
"Mom, it sounds like you need to report whatever it is these people are doing."
"The police wouldn't be able to stop it. More importantly, they wouldn't be able to protect you."
"Well, what about the Hood, then? He could protect us! I'm sure he could help you," her voice rang with hero worship.
"Thea…" Moira shook her head. "Even if I trusted the Hood to help us, I wouldn't know how to reach him."
Thea mulled over this problem in her head, before something occurred to her.
"What about Detective Lance? He's supposed to be some kind of expert on the Hood, right?"
"Sweetheart, he thought that your brother was the Hood," Moira pointed out. The absurdity of that notion was understood.
"Anyone would've jumped to that conclusion after catching Ollie with the Hood's costume…unless they actually knew Ollie. Okay, maybe it's a long shot! But do you have any better ideas?"
Having Malcolm killed had occurred to her, although Ra's al Ghul would only send another assassin to complete the mission and kill her for her treachery, so perhaps that wasn't a better idea. Robert had been the last person who had stood up to the Magician. She wasn't keen on being murdered as Robert had been.
Peter Fleming tossed and turned on the king-sized bed in his hotel room, his sleep disturbed by bits and pieces of his memories.
"You'll be in need of a new chief of police since your last one was killed," the consulting detective said, as he prepared to leave Fleming's penthouse. "After you've cleared Faraday's name, if he should happen to be alive—"
"No one could've survived that explosion," Fleming interjected.
"So you would think…" Holmes replied.
…
"What occurred to me," the Hood, now revealed to be Oliver Queen, retorted, "was that a mask doesn't hide your eyes. Once you've revealed those, you're finished." The Cape swallowed nervously.
…
Chess held the vigilante over the side of the ship by his cape.
"I will find out who you are, I will find out who you love, and I will make them scream," the villain hissed.
…
"Sergeant Faraday," Fleming greeted the job applicant who had just entered his office in ARK Tower. "I understand you're originally from Palm City?"
"Yes, sir, I am. My father was a sheriff here before he died."
"Then you must hate this, the fact that a private security firm is doing the work of the police department."
"I just want to be a cop," Vince insisted. Fleming smiled.
…
The Cape held onto Peter Fleming as he started lowering the bastard underneath the runaway train. Between the angle and the wind whipping past, the hero's hood fell off, revealing his curly blond hair. The only thing preserving his secret identity was his mask.
Peter stared at the Cape's face. The younger man looked so familiar, but he just couldn't place him…
"Who are you?" he shouted.
…
"I never take bribes," Faraday spat back. The very idea was offensive. Fleming noticed the younger man's reaction.
"Forgive me. That was rude. We need men like you at ARK, Faraday. Welcome aboard."
Peter woke abruptly, shooting out of bed, and certain that he now knew his adversary's secret identity.
"I'm… I'm sorry, I'm not sure that I heard you right," Detective Faraday said to the woman who had come into the police precinct and been directed to the Anti-Vigilante Task Force. As he spoke, Quentin Lance approached.
"Mrs. Queen? What are you doing here?" Lance asked, surprised to see her.
"It's the funniest thing," Faraday answered for her. "She seems to be under the impression that you can send messages to the Hood," he smirked at the ridiculousness of that idea. "I mean, you hunt the Hood—all of us on the task force do," he hastened to add. "But Mrs. Queen here seems to think you have him on speed dial. Crazy, right?"
"Yeah, insane… Uh, listen, Faraday… why don't you go look into those reports of sightings of the Hood and this caped character from last night?"
"Sure thing," Vince agreed, his smile gone and his eyes narrowed in thought as he walked away from the two. Looked like Lance was hiding something, not that Vince thought his new boss had an alter ego that dressed in leather hoods or silk capes or tights or whatever, but for all that the man had made his no-vigilante policy crystal clear, Vince was damned if Lance hadn't just gotten rid of him because he did have some means of communicating with the Hood.
It dawned on him that it was possible that Lance, too, knew the Hood's secret identity, whereas Oliver's mother was patently still being kept in the dark.
Lance sighed once the new recruit was out of earshot. This was sure to be an awkward conversation.
"Mrs. Queen," Quentin paused, trying to work out what to say to her. Obviously he wasn't going to tell her about the phone the Hood had given her. "Given that there haven't been any new suspects since, well since—"
"Since you arrested my son?" she prompted.
"Right, that, given that I don't understand what you think I can help you with—"
Just then, they were interrupted by a call over the police scanner. Someone had just gone on a killing spree at Unidac Industries.
"Unidac Industries, that's one of your husband's subsidiaries, isn't it?" Quentin asked.
Moira nodded, her eyes pressed closed at this latest development.
"If there's any way you can get in touch with the Hood, Detective, you need to do it now."
Author's Notes: Chapter title from Hurts' song, "Silver Lining."
Thanks to dreamerlc for reviewing! And thanks to those who have added this story to your list of alerts and/or favorites!