Chapter Text
Queen Consolidated Headquarters
One Month Ago
It wasn't the pain in her shoulders, from her wrists being bound too tight, that made her angry. Or the throbbing of her knees where they dug into the hard, cold floor. It wasn't even being forced to the ground next to Felicity Smoak by Slade Wilson.
It was the story he told.
Five years, and all Laurel had were questions. And when Oliver came back, he gave her lies instead of answers. She died when the Gambit went down, he said, over and over, and now he was here, telling Slade Wilson to lower his swords, to let them go, to just take him instead, because Sara Lance getting to live while a woman named Shado got a bullet to the head? That was his fault. It was his fault that she got to breathe another breath in Purgatory when Shado didn't.
Funny. Because Laurel had spent six years thinking her sister had drowned long before that.
They'd stolen her life from her. They went behind her back and then they died, and she was left behind with lies cutting up new wounds each waking moment, a grief she didn't know how to process and a heart she didn't know how to put back together, left behind to watch her mother leave and what was left of her family fall apart. And now, she had to hear about more of their lies, of their mistakes, had to feel all of her wounds reopen while she waited for her life to get taken away one last time, by the stroke of a sword, along with that of an innocent woman who'd had no part in any of their secrets. Much like the unfortunate Shado, Laurel supposed. She, on the other hand, was the other Lance sister. Forced on her knees to die, so her sister could steal her life away one last time.
Because that was all she and Felicity were, really. Puppets dangled on their strings, to play act one last time in a men's story that demanded an encore.
It made her angry.
God, she was so angry.
So much so that her hands balled into fists and shook behind her back, that there were tears burning her eyes, burning right down her cheeks when they spilled over, that it was getting hard to breathe because she was just so angry.
She was going to die, because her sister ran off her with her boyfriend, because they lied, because they cheated, because they crossed the wrong people, she was going to die for that. Laurel Lance, screwed over one last time by her lying boyfriend and her dead sister.
The anger cut right down to her bones, spreading through every part of her, making her teeth rattle, rising up in her throat; she was so angry she could scream.
And she did.
She opened her mouth, and screamed off the top of her lungs.
It was loud - so impossibly loud -, ringing in her ears, but she didn't hear her voice so much as she felt it. She felt it vibrate, pulsing around her, through her, in her throat.
And it felt long. Like it could last forever if she let it.
When she stopped and opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was all the glass. All around her, all around all four them; broken glass littering the ground wherever she looked.
For that one moment, everything was quiet.
And then Oliver moved.
He charged at Slade Wilson, knocking him to the side. They stumbled, slid across the floor, and right out one of the shattered windows.
Laurel caught her breath, eyes frozen on the spot they'd disappeared from, before she turned her gaze to Felicity. She was lying on her side, looking out of it, just barely conscious.
Feeling behind her, Laurel wrapped her fingers around a stray shard of glass, turning it over, moving it up and down, to cut through her binds. It must have been sharp because they gave way quickly - even though she'd felt the sting of the glass grazing her own hands in the process - and she threw them away, scrambling over to Felicity.
"Felicity?" she called out to her, shaking her shoulder. "Felicity, can you hear me?"
What she got in response was a faint groan, and an unintelligible mumble, but there were still no major injuries on her body that Laurel could see. She worked on freeing her of her own binds next, careful not to cut her, rubbing her hands and arms up and down to get her blood flowing again when she was done.
She jumped to her feet when there was suddenly noise behind her, whirling around to see a hand grasp at the window ledge; Oliver's hand.
Even as she ran over to help him up, the thought ran through her mind. Let him fall.
She helped him pull himself back up and fall back inside. He got up, looking down at his bloodied hands, before his eyes went up to her.
His mouth moved but he said nothing, like he couldn't find the words; not that there were any she'd accept.
"You should check on Felicity," she saved him from having to scramble for more apologies - or more lies - and his head whipped to the side the moment she spoke.
All the glass crunched under his feet as he made his way over to Felicity; he crouched next to her, taking her face in his hands, probably leaving bloody marks on it, and talking to her quietly, too low to hear.
Laurel looked away from them, turning back to the window instead. She stuck her head out, looking all the way down to the pavement below.
There was no sign of Slade Wilson anywhere.
Starling City, California
Present Day
"In an unexpected turn of events, this evening's hostage crisis at Starling National Bank ended with no further casualties, and the reappearance of Helena Bertinelli, daughter of now deceased mafia boss Frank Bertinelli – "
Laurel tipped the bottle upside-down, shook the last few droplets out of it, then tossed it to join the pile of its predecessors; maybe she should take out the trash soon.
"Bertinelli, also known as The Huntress, is being described by eye witnesses as one of two women subduing the robbers and helping rescue the hostages – "
Helena Bertinelli as a force for good? That was new.
Laurel turned the volume up as she took a good, long sip of her wine, giving the news report her full attention; it had been a while since her TV had buzzed with anything other than reports of theft, vandalism and murder.
"The other woman in the rescue effort remains more mysterious, however, though speculation is already under way that she is someone we have seen in Starling before – "
Laurel sat up.
The report cut over to crime scene footage, giving a nice, wide view of Starling National Bank's structure being left bare, because all the glass that had covered its façade was scattered across the ground. Speaking over the zoom-ins, the anchorwoman related the witnesses' accounts of some kind of sonic blast.
The woman in black.
The woman in black who had helped The Arrow get away, by dropping in out of nowhere and holding up a device that she used to shatter every glass surface in the place.
Much like she had shattered every glass surface at Queen Consolidated.
It'd been a month, and it was all Laurel could think about. She'd tried to explain it away, write it off as a freak accident or something, but it had been her. She'd felt that pulse go through her. It had been her.
She had files upon files upon more files on her computer, all part of the painstaking, month-long effort to explain it; to explain how she had done it. All it had amounted to was opera singers breaking glasses with their voices. Which was all probably faked anyway. Nothing to explain what she had done.
But what the woman in black did, however she did it – it came close.
Two Weeks Later
"Another update from your girlfriend?"
Sara only spared Helena an annoyed look before turning back to her phone – a new, touchscreen smartphone, with its own customized OS and impenetrable cloud, courtesy of Felicity Smoak. Helena had been there when she'd given the phone to Sara, all bright smiles and animated hand gestures; she was only somewhat offended that she didn't get a phone, too.
"The latest is, there's some guys cooking up a new drug and putting it on the streets," Sara informed, dragging her finger along the screen. "One kid's already in ICU because of it."
"Which makes this crime-fighter bait number…five, this week?" Helena commented. "Pretty soon, she's gonna start making crime happen herself just so we'd have to take it on."
Sara sighed. "She misses this," she said. "The whole 'saving the city' thing."
"We didn't come here to save the city," Helena pointed out.
"No," Sara agreed, "but we've still been…putting in the hours, right?"
Helena pursed her lips. "One stopped bank robbery two weeks ago does not vigilantes make."
"You say that like it's the only thing we've done."
She did have her there.
"Fine," she relented. "And I take it Felicity gets to join in on the fun?"
"It's kind of why she's been sending us these alerts, so…yeah," Sara said, and Helena was learning that, much like she did for every person in her past, The Canary also had a particular kind of tone she reserved for one Felicity Smoak. It usually went hand-in-hand with a little smile at the corner of her mouth, that just bordered on happy.
"Great, looking forward to that," Helena deadpanned. "In the meantime" – she circled back for her bag, and the sandwiches and sodas she'd stashed there – "lunch."
Sara took her share of the food, lowering herself to the ground. "Maybe we should get a stove in here."
"We don't have electricity," Helena pointed out as she took her own seat on the ground.
"That's because we don't pay the bill."
"Are you suggesting we rob a bank for a change to get the money to pay it?"
Sara actually seemed to consider that. "Well, no," she eventually dismissed the idea. "But maybe we should look into making this tower…suited for more permanent living arrangements."
"Right," Helena muttered, pursing her lips.
"Helena – "
"No, I get it," she said. "You want to stay here. It's pretty much what you've always wanted."
"And what you never did."
To be a sitting duck waiting to get its neck wrung by Ra's al Ghul and his army of assassins, in a city whose every corner was etched with tainted memories? No, she didn't particularly want that. But hey… "Chi si volta, e chi si gira, sempre a casa va finire."
Sara smiled. "You know, Italian isn't one of my strong suits."
Helena smiled back for a moment, before she said, "It means that wherever you go, you will always end up back at home." She shrugged. "And so I did, I guess."
Sara nodded. "As did I."
And such a sweet homecoming it all was.
Still, Helena raised her soda can, bumping it with Sara's. "Cheers to that."
"You sure you want to do this from your place?" Sara asked, getting up on the bike behind Helena. "Verdant has a better set-up."
"I've got all the firepower I need right here," was Felicity's response, and Sara thought she sounded about as enthusiastic as she had ever heard her; she couldn't help but smile.
"Okay, then," she said, just as Helena revved the engine. "Where to?"
"So, under other circumstances, I would've scored some of their stuff and tagged the money – 'cause money is like pigeons or something," Felicity spoke into their earpieces over the noise of the bike; Sara was pretty sure she knew exactly what kind of expression Helena was sporting right about now. "Since, you know, it always finds its back to top brass, like – no, it's probably not like pigeons, why am I thinking about pigeons? Is it pigeons? Anyway." She cleared her throat. "Because we don't have any of that, I went snooping around the PD's reports, got the address of where that poor kid in ICU bought this stuff, and then I hacked CCTV cams, and tracked the – "
"Just tell me where to drive to," Helena interrupted.
"Right. Uh, they're using one of the decommissioned buildings in the East Glades as a makeshift lab," Felicity informed. "About a block south from the old CNRI building. The police are too busy dealing with everything else, they don't go down there much these days. Makes it kinda perfect for an illegal drug-making lab."
"And how many are we up against?" Sara spoke up, as Helena spurred the bike down the more secluded roads.
"Peanuts," Felicity said. "Well, for the two of you anyway. Six guys, tops."
It ended up being more like ten.
All cooped up in their little lab, and looking at the state of it, Sara wasn't surprised their stuff was making people sick. They were probably close to getting sick themselves, too; there wasn't even a proper ventilation system in the place.
She snuck up behind them, blocking a possible escape route, while her partner took the front.
"'Evening, boys," Helena said, stepping up to right where they could all see her, and drawing both her guns.
There was a predictable commotion among the men; two drew their own guns, a few wielded knives, and one just put his hands up. Probably the smartest of the bunch, that one.
"What the hell do you want?" one of them demanded, just as another seemed to come to a realization and let out, "Wait, you're The Huntress."
Helena grinned, and pulled both triggers.
The men with the guns went down, yelling, and Helena kept moving forward, kept shooting, even as she kicked the dropped guns behind her, and sent half those still standing Sara's way.
She wielded her staff, sending one man flying into the dirty tables and jabbing another in the gut, before she spun around to slap the metal across his cheek. She tripped a third one, kicking her boot in his face to knock him out just as the last one came charging at her with a knife. She broke off her staff into its two halves, parried his blows, until his blade was out of his hands; she hit him across the stomach with one of her batons, on the back of the head with the other when he doubled over, and he joined his friend on the ground, unconscious.
When she straightened, she saw Helena kneeling next to one of the men, an arm across his chest and her crossbow at the side of his throat.
"I want to know where you got this stuff from," she demanded.
"Screw you," the man groaned back at her, and earned a jab of her arrow against his neck for his efforts.
"Look, you're not some big-time drug lord, and you're clearly not trying to make a name for yourself here," Helena said. "Your product, it's what desperate kids buy because they don't have the money for the good stuff. You're obviously not someone who's got the kind of high that will get him his own market, so" – she jabbed the arrow deeper – "I'm just asking you to tell me who set you up with this operation. Who gets their ten percent share of this little enterprise, huh?"
The man wasn't getting any more cooperative, though Sara surmised that would all change if Helena began using some of her more - unorthodox methods.
"This stuff circulates just outside the Triad's territory," Felicity's voice came in over their comms, and it sounded a little stilted to Sara's ears. "Maybe they're expanding their business."
Helena cocked her head, then looked down at the man with renewed interest. "Trust me," she told him, "the people you fear? I'm way worse than them." She smiled. "If you don't tell me what I want to know, I'm going to start breaking your fingers, then your arms, then your legs, and then I'll pry out your kneecaps, and it's all going to hurt so much more than anything Chien Na Wei and her little knives can do to you."
Sara studied the man, from the way his eyes widened to the bobbing of his throat beneath Helena's arrow, and though he still said nothing, she was pretty sure they had their answer nonetheless. Which, as it turned out, was exactly what Helena was looking for.
"Thank you," she said, then knocked him unconscious with one sharp blow to the face. "So, the Triad," she concluded, rising back to her feet. "Makes sense."
"They have monopoly on most of the drug trade in Starling," Felicity supplied.
"Mhmm," Helena agreed. "And hey, now we have another thing for China White to hold against us, right?"
"Right," Felicity echoed quietly.
Sara glanced over to Helena, giving her a pointed look; all she got in response was a shrug.
"How much time before the SCPD gets here?" she asked.
"I'm sending them an anonymous tip right…now. You have about five minutes."
"Copy that," Helena acknowledged, and Sara felt her come up at her side. "Got something else there, Birdie?"
Sara shook her head, sliding her hand over the small syringes, filled up with bleak green liquid, all lined up on one of the tables. "Ever see a drug that comes pre-packaged like this?"
"No," Helena said. "But given what a bad high it is, I'd say pre-packaging is the least they could do for their customers. And that's the PD's problem now anyway." She tugged on Sara's hand. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Who're you?"
Laurel dropped her briefcase onto the table separating her and one Anthony Reese. "I'm Laurel Lance, with the District Attorney's office."
"Ah, great," he sighed. "Look, I already told the cops everything I could, so – "
"I'm not here about the drug bust, Mr. Reese," she told him, taking her seat. "Well, I'm not interested in your operation, at least."
He frowned. "So…what do you want?"
"I want you" – she leaned in closer – "to tell me everything you can about The Huntress. Helena Bertinelli? She's the reason you're here, right?"
"Yeah, I told the cops everything about her, too. So, you know…go look at my statement."
Laurel raised an eyebrow. "Your statement is predictably lacking in information, what with it coming from a man who got beat up by a woman with a crossbow."
"Yeah well, there was two of them," he muttered.
"Two?"
He looked up at that, then narrowed his eyes. "Okay, say I tell you more than I told the cops," he said, "what do I get out of it?"
A bargainer. Great. "How about you tell me what I want to know, and I don't make sure you get locked up for the maximum five years instead of the eighteen months you're looking at now?"
"Whoa, hey!" He raised his hands. "I gotta try and make the best of my situation here, you know?"
She said nothing.
"Right." He licked his lips. "So, Bertinelli, she comes storming the place, right, and she's got this other lady with her – I'm thinking it's the same one from the news, you know, the one that showed up at Starling National?"
Laurel nodded.
"So, The Huntress starts shooting my guys, and then she starts asking me about who I work for and everything. Like, she wants to know who I answer to."
"And who do you answer to?" Laurel asked.
"Nuh uh, you said you didn't care about that."
"You're right, I don't," she conceded. "Anything else?"
He shrugged.
"You know," she told him, "I could actually consider shortening your sentence, if I hear something useful about Helena Bertinelli from you."
He seemed to mull that over, then nodded, looking over his shoulder before he leaned in closer. "I can't be sure," he said, "but there's rumors going around on the street – some of my guys, they say they've seen Bertinelli, like two or three times, breaking into convenience stores down in The Glades at night."
"Breaking into convenience stores?" Laurel deadpanned.
"It sounds way out there, I know, but I'm thinking that's how she gets by, right? For food and stuff?"
That –
Actually sounded like a good lead.
And where there was a break-in, there was usually also a police report, and a pattern that she could follow.
Laurel smiled at the man, getting to her feet. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Reese," she said, grabbing her briefcase off the table.
"What? No wait, you said you'd – "
She slammed the door shut behind her.