Chapter Text
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words were ours: that we'll never be harmed
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GILGIT, PAKISTAN (1993)
Sara supposes it shouldn't surprise her that Savage had a palace so close to Nanda Parbat; in her experience, power tends to draw others of the same ilk together. She doubts Savage could've resisted looking for the city, once the rumors of its existence had begun to spread; she thinks of him and Ra's together and shudders. Insinuating himself into Ra's' close circle may have been harder than Savage had expected, Sara muses - certainly harder than normal kings and other power figures they know Savage has been drawn to. She hasn't seen enough of Savage's fighting style to know if he'd been League trained, but she supposes it's possible. More likely, though, he and Ra's had orbited each other like planets, drawn together but never quite touching.
Still, it's disconcerting to travel to places she knows so well from her days at the League and think of Savage walking those same paths. She doubts he knows the rooftops; she could travel those blindfolded in the dark, and had, many times, training with Nyssa. Gilgit was home to the closest airport to Nanda Parbat and had been under League protection for hundreds of years, along with dozens of nearby villages.
Luckily, Savage's fort and the surrounding village of Karimabad had always been just far enough to prevent any casual day journeys, and boring enough that Sara had only visited on League business. She knows Nyssa has been there, though; Nyssa had probably traveled every inch of the land for hundreds of miles by the time she was ten. The thought of her in Savage's home, ancient or no, makes Sara's skin crawl.
It's mid-July, the height of the short, intense summers she remembers so well. The sun is intense, the heat distracting her from Rip's discussion - not that it's hard to do.
"...Miss Lance, are you paying any attention?" Sara blinks, turning to him. After parking the Waverider on the outskirts of Gilgit, they'd taken the jumpship to the border of Karimabad, several miles away from Savage's Baltit Fort. After lying abandoned for 50 years, someone had put money into reconstruction efforts; Gideon had found mention of Savage in a survey review of the findings at the Fort. The artifacts discovered are still on site, awaiting analysis; their job is to get Kendra close enough to see if any of them could be used in place of the dagger. It's a long shot, but the danger factor is low, so it's worth a try.
"Fort. Kendra. Artifact. Got it." Rip rolls his eyes so hard it must hurt, and Sara cuts him off before he speaks. "Look, this is my League playground. I got it."
"Somehow, that's not reassuring." Sara smiles crookedly, and only bares her teeth a little. It was his idea to come here, not hers, so if they're all still terrified of her - well, they should be.
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you watch me steady
you watch me with such a quiet sincerity
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In retrospect, she should've put it together the moment they arrived here, the moment her feet touched this familiar ground.
"Miss Lance - Sara, you can't-" Rip stands between her and the hot desert air, the summer sun glaring down in the way it only can on the high plateaus Sara knows so well.
"I already did," she snaps. She pushes around him, hears the click of his revolver and feels its press against her side, feels the bloodlust surge, hungry and raging.
"You don't want to do that," she states, voice deadly calm. She would regret killing Rip, she knows she would, and it's the only thing that keeps her from snapping.
Then she hears the whine of the cold gun, and Snart's voice say almost as coldly, "You really don't." Rip backs down, holding up his hands and letting Snart grab his gun.
"This is a mistake, Sara."
She stares him down, letting the bloodlust play on her face, and bares her teeth as he looks away. "It was nearly your last."
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you hold me heavy
you hold me like I was born to be held
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Nyssa is not hard to find; she's bleeding and delirious, but had still made her way to a small rocky outcrop. Sara finds her passed out in the shade, and for one horrible moment fears she's dead.
But no, Sara's fingers find her pulse, faint and rapid. And then small fingers grip her wrist, weak and calloused and not-quite-Nyssa. Sara can't help smiling.
"It's alright, beloved," she murmurs, shifting to shield Nyssa from the bits of sun that slip through the rocky cracks. "I'm here to help you, not harm you."
"I don't need your help," the girl growls, or tries to growl. It's weak and shaky and so Nyssa that Sara nearly laughs.
"You have been poisoned," she says instead, gently slipping her hand from Nyssa's fading grip. "You are wounded, dehydrated, and lost."
"I am not lost," Nyssa says stubbornly. Her eyes have trouble focusing, and she squints at Sara blearily. "I am waiting."
"For your father, yes, but he will not make it in time."
"What do you know of my father?" Nyssa tries to push herself up, but she's too weak, and her arms collapse. She falls back to the rock with a cry, falling on the wound in her side where the arrow is still in her flesh, and Sara instinctively reaches for her. That cry would call her anywhere.
"Easy, Nyssa," she breathes, carefully helping her to sit and lean back against a rock.
"How do you know my name?" Her words are slurred, eyes dazed and bright, but she still manages to stay lucid.
Sara purses her lips, thinking back on the story Nyssa had told her, of dreaming of Sara before she'd met her. She hadn't given many details, unfortunately, and Sara sighs.
"I know that you are Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra's al Ghul," she finally says. She holds out a water bottle to Nyssa, who narrows her eyes at Sara and doesn't take it. "Really, Nys, if I was going to kill you I'd've done it by now."
"How dare you call me that? I am-"
"Heir to the Demon, yeah. You know, I forgot how annoying you can be about that." Nyssa stares. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, and then her eyes roll up and she slumps back. "Dammit," Sara mutters. She checks Nyssa's pulse; still weak, but there. She slowly dribbles water into Nyssa's mouth while checking the wound on her side, relieved to see the arrow had gone clean through. The scar is one she's familiar with, in twenty years' time. It seems the poison is the only real threat.
Sara pulls Gideon's dose from her pack, then hits her comms with a quick glance at Nyssa.
"Gideon, will this knock her out?" she asks quietly.
"It is intended only as a antidote to the poison, Miss Lance. It has no sedative properties."
"Dammit," Sara mutters. "Okay, Nys, I'd better give this to you before I patch you up. Here's to hoping there's no side effects."
"Actually, the statistical probability-"
"Gideon," Sara growls around the plastic needle cap in her mouth. She sticks it into Nyssa's arm, marveling at her smooth, unmarked skin (angry over the scars she already has). And then she holds her breath, waiting, continuing to dribble as much water as she can down Nyssa's throat. When ten minutes have passed with little reaction, Sara sighs with relief. A hand to Nyssa's forehead finds her slightly cooler, although still clammy.
"Alright, time to clean you up," she tells her sleeping beloved. "At least to hold you until Ra's gets here."
"Miss Lance, forgive the question, but how is Ra's going to find her?"
Sara tears the fabric of Nyssa's shirt away carefully, answers absently, "I'm going to take her to him." There's a silence, and Sara wonders if maybe she'd just overloaded Gideon's brain.
"I... see."
Sara chews her lip, glancing at Nyssa's unconscious face; she needs to disinfect this, and she doubts Nyssa will sleep through that. "That gonna be a problem, Gideon?" she asks mildly as she carefully slips one of Nyssa's gloves between her teeth, taking a slow breath. And then she pours alcohol into the wound around the arrow and Nyssa is screaming, body jerking against Sara's hold on her shoulder, eyes wide and dark with pain. Sara takes Nyssa's face in her hands, pressing their foreheads together, and whispers, "It's alright, beloved. You'll be alright, shh. You're stronger than the pain." She brushes at Nyssa's tears gently as the girl passes out again, then carefully leans her back against the rock.
"I don't believe so," Gideon answers. Sara wipes her eyes with shaking fingers.
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but if this goes wrong again
if this is how it was meant to fall
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She's covered in a long robe, hood pulled far over her face, when she finds Ra's at the edge of town.
"Ra's al Ghul!" There are suddenly a dozen arrows and twice as many swords pointed toward her, and the girl in her arms.
"Hold!" Ra's steps forward, one hand raised, as he covers the distance between them slowly, one hand resting on his sword. Nyssa is cradled to Sara's chest, head resting on her shoulder, arrow still protruding from her side. Sara hadn't dared remove it without any safe way of stopping the bleeding. When Ra's is close enough Sara lifts her head, letting him see her face, and he immediately orders, "Lower your weapons."
Sara steps forward, dipping her head, and Ra's smiles. "So we meet again, Taer al-Sahfer. And you've brought me something precious." He holds out his arms and Sara hesitates only a moment before handing Nyssa to him, brushing the hair back from her pale face.
"She will live," Sara says, taking a step back to study him. He is harder than the man she'd spent two years with in 1958, but not yet the maniac who will hurt Nyssa so badly. "She was poisoned; you will not be able to identify the antidote used to cure her. Please do not try." Ra's dips his head in assent.
"It seems Nyssa is to need you as much as you will need her," he observes, and there's a softness in his eyes that Sara doesn't remember seeing before.
"She needs you as well," she says, words slipping from her mouth before she can stop them. "You are Ra's, but you are also her father." His eyes snap to her, hardening, but Sara doesn't back down. He is no longer her Ra's; that is Nyssa, if anyone, and technically the League no longer exists.
"I can see why you two will get along," he finally says. Sara smiles. She steps forward, pressing a gentle kiss to Nyssa's forehead, and whispers, "Until we meet again, beloved."
She's a few steps away when she hears Ra's ask, "Will she remember this?"
Sara turns slowly, hood already back in place; it is close enough to 1960 that some members might still recognize her. "She calls me her white angel," she answers, and then she's gone.
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will you pretend that you know
steady as the morning and just go
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