strongerthanyouknow | { we're starting fires 'til our lives are burning gold

She doesn't stop moving forward, but even then, she can't stop looking backward. Finger reaching out to brush the neck of the great beast next to her, and so much taller. No fear in her about whether he'll skitter, or they'll collide, or if there was a chance fo trampling. It's only for the man in the saddle, and every sound that comes from him, his body, and the saddle with all four of them in flight.

Hitting the rockier outcroppings puts them close, and when she finally can, she calls him to a stop, too. Her heartbeat is in her ears. Her teeth. Everything feels like it has the race and vibration of it, as she comes back to where Oliver is sprawled, looking both nothing like a threat and everything almost like one (black clothes, ripped, bloodied, far more built than she remembers). "We're here."

She's most than mostly certain he's unconcious, but she says it the way you would.
Out of habit when speaking to something both wounded and possibly predator.

An announcement, even if she's still mostly out of breath, muscles gone loose and sliding, throbbing everywhere with the run. There's a careful air to figure out if he is or isn't out before she touches the knots again, in case it's directing him, or simply keeping him from tumbling all of this space to the hard stone floor.

He is barely conscious by the time the horse pulls to a halt at the caves. Pain and blood loss and exhaustion have tipped Oliver towards unconsciousness even as familiar hands tug at the knots on the rope to free him. The world shifts and bobbles as warm and achingly familiar hands pull him down from the mount.

Sara.
His light.
His beloved.

Oliver groans as she helps him down and keeps him from crashing headfirst to the hard ground. Safe. He's safe with her. His Saraa.

"S'ra," a barely there mutter as he staggers hard.

His eyes are rolling. His body sluggish. There's blood all over her saddle and, looking back the way they've come, with the expert focus of her training, she can see spots of the trail of blood that has flown from them on this way. She'll need to see to that as well, between leaving and getting back, and doing both in time enough for him not to pass and out and die in her absence.

Her name -- that name -- still punches into the soft of her heart, the filigree of her lungs, taking out more than it puts in. But Oliver's saying it as he's stumbling, and she's shouting, "Hey! Hey!" Trying to catch him even as he's falling. Though it's in the middle of it that she knows down is the better direction than up. They aren't far from the front of the cave, but no one would have cause to come down this way. No one had for years.

It's easier to just help him down, rather than back. He probably can't hear her any better than he can talk, but she tells him anyway, once he's down on the hard ground. "You have to stay here. For your own safety. I'll be back as soon as I can."

He's exhausted. Worn beyond measure.
There is little left that he has to give at this point. Oliver has fought and struggled to this moment and even given his stubborn nature and determination, there is only so much more that he can offer.

Sara. She found him.
Bright and shining and while he isn't sure if he's dead or alive he's certain that she is the reason he's still breathing.

He trusts her.
His Sara.

The cave is dark and hidden and it speaks to Oliver so much of his home for the past few years. A life hidden in darkness. A life bathed in blood. He startles badly, throwing off the blankets and clinging to his knife like a lifeline.

Sara?
Sara!

Had he screamed her name? He can't be sure.

καναρίνι would say she can't remember the last time she was this scared, but it would be a lie.

It's the day she washed up here, starving, terrified, all but drown. But, like she's been taught for years now, you don't fight fear. You run with it, you use it, and καναρίνι has gotten very good at that. She takes the horse but not the saddle, and she stops only to rinse the blood from her skin. She avoids people where she has to, and tries to hurry conversations where she can.

Every second is one second too long, is one second she's too late, is one second where she must have fallen off her horse and hit her head because Oliver Queen can't be real and a man can't step foot on to Paradise Island, but she can't stop. She can't stop until she has everything she has the horse laden with blankets and everything she could pack without arousing too much suspicion.

The ride back feels like it takes forever. Each closer space covered feeling only like it's taking too long, until she can reach the beach and the caves beneath the far caves beneath the cliffs. She can't entirely tell if there's yelling or if it's the crash of the waves on the rocks. She fills her arms and heads for the first opening Oliver had made, desperately hoping that he's still alive, and he is.

And he is shouting.

"I'm here," she says, as the noise she couldn't quite pull from the waves suddenly sounds deafening when she's near him. Like the whole island will hear. His voice, and her wrong name. "I'm here." Even though he looks more than half-crazed and the smell of blood has started to grow since she left. He's armed. Again. She freezes but then keeps moving. Her sandals are light on the ground, thin and quiet, as she drops the armful by him, digging for her kit. "You need to lay back down."

"You can't keep moving this much. You'll bleed out." She wonders if shock can last this long. For him. Or her.

It had to have been a dream. Some form of hallucination even if Oliver didn't recall how he got from the beach to the cave he found himself in. It had to be because Sara had been stolen from him. Screaming his name as she was sucked away by the water a second time when the Amazo went down.

But then she's there. Her hair a shower of gold, her arms laden with things and Oliver stills instantly.

It wasn't a dream.
Sara had found him.

He sinks to his knees, dizzy and exhausted as she begins to unpack things. Tools of healing. Thread. Water. Oliver is too worn to do anything more than obey. When he is directed to lay down, he lays. Move this way or that and he does. But he does manage to rasp a question.

"Where are we?"

He obeys, silent and weak and closer to death than she can guess, but he does anyway, which is more than she really expects. She can't stop the sharp inhale of breath or the worried look, mixing horror and confusion more and more potent each time she has to remove another piece of his clothing to reach another wound and finds him only further and further scarred.

She was no novice to scars. καναρίνι, who learned to fall into suit and stride, to say with her sisters, still laughing even at the most dire of seconds, complain tomorrow, if you're still alive. You didn't become an Amazong without knowing them all intimately, both on your skin and on others, training for war every day as though it was already raining down from the heavens. But this. This was something else. She didn't know what it was.

But the brutality of the strikes and the lack of care when it was given sung in every ragged ridge of even the scars that weren't open, it's like a map she can read with a compass to translate the words.

καναρίνι started a little at the sound of his voice, assuming he might have passed out from the pain of cleaning out and stitching up five wounds already. The question isn't any easier than the darting, trapped bird of her heart at that voice. At the scar, the one she'd almost let her self-reach out a finger to trace in confused, sympathetic horror.

"Paradise." Someone said that, and that alone, to her when she first asked. It's hollower on her lips this time than her memory of how it was given to her. Because it will not be that for him. Anything offered or earned by her here will not be extended to him through grace. She knotted her last stitch on this one.

"The island. Specifically. Paradise Island."
It probably won't be for her either, when she's discovered.

He is weak, but he is not yet dead. Pain sings along his nerves, but he can breathe through it. Ignore it. It is not the first or the last time he has felt pain.

Oliver can hear her quiet reactions as they strip him free from his waterlogged and ragged clothes. Tattoos and scars that had come long after Lian Yu littered his skin, evidence of brutal struggle after struggle for survival. The League needed their members strong and the strong ones were the ones who did not die in training.

Paradise.
And he had landed in hell, taken in by the Demon himself.

"Good." His eyes drift closed. "You deserve paradise."

She didn't know what to do with those words. Everything she'd come to love and everything she'd once lost seemed to have thrown itself into a complete disarray, made of Oliver's voice in her ears and Oliver's blood on her hands. Too real. Too here. Too alive. Ripping up ghosts and graves she thought she'd made peace with when she took her name and chose the only future available.

"You should save your strength," she says,

like the only thing she's thinking isn't 'you're supposed to be dead.'

A weak sound that was almost a chuckle before tapering off into a wet sounding cough. "I will not die this day." Nor will he die the next. A mantra that had carried him both through Lian Yu and later through Nada Parbat. The simple determination to not die, to not succumb to injury or weakness or even exposure. Al Sahm Al Akhdar set his will against the world and he would continue to do so.

His eyes drift closed. There is water in his belly and his limbs are finally warming.

"I will not die this day. I will have my revenge. I will kill them all."

The first time he says it the corner of Sara's mouth almost flutters, at the almost familiarity in the way that is put, the way her sisters would, but the second repetition of the words, harder, colder, firmer, like cementing bricks, makes a shiver run down her spine. The words after those chasing it with something sharper, that has her sitting back and looking back up toward Oliver's face, where his eyes are closed.

"Kill all who?" Which starts what can't be stopped. "Who did this to you?"

Edited 2017-12-05 00:52 (UTC)

The words are hard and cold because he means for them to be. Oliver takes a long, slow breath. He registers the shift in her voice but his awareness is drifting, tugging him down into sleep as his body demands rest.

"The League of Assassins. The Demon thinks he can sacrifice his heir." A chilly smile. "But I will have my revenge. The Lazarus pit will not save him this time."

Sara's brow furrowed looking down at him. His voice thick, slightly slurred, like he might be about to finally pass out or fall asleep, one, the other, or both. His body probably needed them both. But it doesn't stop him from smiling that strange slash of s smile that reminds her too much of metal. Sharp and cold. Hard under her breastbone. Confusing in her chest.

"The League of--" She cannot have heard that right. Or demons. Or revenge. Or sacrifices.

Oliver Queen was a spoiled rich boy who drowned in a surprise accident.

Oliver Queen was a very different man.
While he can hear the hesitation in her voice, the confusion, he can no longer fight his body's demand for sleep. Rest. In time he would heal and in time he would return to the League and have his revenge.

They will all die.

He sleeps, dreaming of golden hair and laughter and small, warm hands on his skin.

Oliver wakes and the sun has shifted in the sky. Hours perhaps, or even days had passed. He can hear the crash of surf as he remains still, assessing his injuries. Aching and in pain, but nothing that he couldn't stomach.

He starts to move, to sit up and take in where he was with a far clearer head.

"Peace, Ollie." It's soft, calmer than it was before, and more familiar, but it still bounces around the cavern, as her hand finds his shoulder. That, too, is gentle, and it's not entirely warding so much as a warning. There, not to hinder, but to keep him from hurting himself, or to help him if she has to. "You've had a rough few days."

The ocean and the sand, and whoever these League of Assassins were, they'd none of them done his wounds any good. Given that was likely the point. That, or simply his death. It hadn't been surprising to find they didn't heal easy, but it'd been a little rough. All around. It'd been a relief when his fever broke, and she was finally more certain than less he was actually not going to die on her shortly.

Ollie.
It was a name he had all but forgotten until finding her again. His brow furrows as it starts to come back. Thrashing in a feverish nightmare, but always with Sara there, always talking to him, soothing him.

"How long?" His voice rough and hoarse.

How long has he been unconscious? How long? Did the League believe him dead? Or does he have pursuers to worry about?

"Three and half days."

Enough time to get used to sitting next to him, to the look and shape of the scars lining all of his skin near the bandages she changes, and to talking to him occasionally. Even if he was too out of it to respond, or even hear her likely. Time enough and time too much to wrestle with the demons of the idea Oliver could have washed up on the shore of Paradise Island long enough for her to know he was alive, he'd lived through all these years, just to die as she sat in silent vigil by him.

"Here." Sara kept the one hand on his shoulder still, settled into support,
but her other hand held up a waterskin. "Drink some water."

Three and a half days.
Not counting how long he might have drifted in the water.

No, if the League was still tracking him they would have found him by now. Good. Let their arrogance be their undoing. He nods at the knowledge, raising his hand to bring the skin to his lips. The water is cool and sweet. Refreshing. His throat no longer feels coated with sand and salt.

"Thank you."
The hand no longer holding the skin reaches up, touching a tendril of her hair. "I was so certain I'd lost you."

It's down now. Her hair. The hours of her day, the excuses and even lies she's told at this point, don't really leave time for light amusements, not without people who would try to find out why she's suddenly gone, suddenly apart, suddenly quiet again. While she works only at finding a way to be here. Up or down it doesn't matter. The only matter of these three and half days has been the tenacious refusal to let him die.

Even if -- as she's frozen watching his fingers touch the curl of her hair -- she has no clue what do with him alive.
It takes a second to unfreeze her heart, her throat, and nod just barely. "I thought you went down. With the Gambit."

He still doesn't know where he is.
Paradise doesn't make sense. The only thing that has mattered in those fleeting moments when he would claw his way to awareness was Sara beside him. Her voice soothing him back down into sleep.

"I did," his hand falls away. "I washed up in Hell. An island called Lian Yu." His eyes close. "I was found almost two years later and brought to Nanda Parbat. To the League of Assassins." And there he surrendered his name and his very soul to R'as al-Ghul.

The names aren't familiar, but then she would doubt he's heard of where they are either.

The last one she's had too much time to turn over and over in her head. The slurred and panicked words that came in his sleep only every now against breaking the absolute silence, the absolute stillness of him in sleep. The one that had her checking him more than a few times to make sure that silence and that stillness weren't death. It was an uncanny, unnatural kind of both of them.

"And those are the people who did this to you?"
Sara gave a cursory sort of look that implied the whole of him.

"Yes." And he knows he owes her far more than a simple answer like that. Oliver levers himself up, ignoring the pain as he does so. "I was trained by them. Groomed by R'as al-Ghul to become his heir, the new Head when he chose to step down."

A thin smile. Hard and sharp. "There were those in the League that didn't want an outsider as heir. Including his daughters. They attempted to have me killed."

Sara doesn't like that smile. Something in her. She doesn't even know what to call it. Cold down her skin. A prickling at the back of her neck. Cold, and almost cruel, and so completely out of place on this face that had for so long now only been a memory. Of the boy with careless laughing eyes, who she fell in love with, the wrong way, and fell out of a boat, and a whole life, with. Because of.

It's only that he decides he's going to move, and she can't help staying close, trying to make sure he doesn't injure himself, that she doesn't pull back from it. It's gnawing at her center, following him. It confused, and uncertain, when the only question she can seem to form into coherence is so simple. "Why would you want that?"

"Because Oliver Queen died on Lian Yu. The only way to survive Nanda Parbat and the League was to become what R'as saw in me. An arrow in the darkness. His. I surrendered everything, including my soul to him."

He had bathed in blood. Oceans of it. He had fought for his position and he had earned the title of heir. They would not take that from him too.

The words he keeps using are cold and specific, and driven and there's ... she doesn't want to call it passion. But that, too. Just. Just so cold, too. And. Pride. It's so removed. And there's something like that. Something remorseless and unashamed. Earned. It's crazy. None of that makes any sense. Not for. Anything. Anything that was anything. Oliver Queen, an Assassin? Adopted son to some kind of, what, king of Assassins?

Not that she'd believe in the Amazons, or much even remember them as something more than hazily belonging to a history class in her childhood, before the Gambit, had she?

"And it all tried to kill you," καναρίνι couldn't stop herself from throwing back. "Wouldn't the be reason enough to leave it alone, and behind you? If they all, probably, think you're dead?"

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