"You know you don't have to do this, Sara. We'll find a way."

Sara hated the pacifying timbre in Oliver's voice. Sometimes she wondered if he ever saw her as anything apart from being "Laurel's little sister". Well, Laurel's little sister saw more horrors in six years than Laurel ever would. She didn't need to be coddled.

She spun around, blue eyes blazing with righteous indignance. "And what would that be? We've been hiding out here for days, just waiting for the Mirakuru soldiers to storm in and ravage this place. Laurel's on a clock, Ollie. If it was Thea in her place, I'm willing to bet that you would do whatever it takes to bring her back. So don't act all level-headed and rational and tell me to calm down and re-think my options."

Oliver averted her gaze. She was right. When Slade took Thea, he had almost lost his mind due to worry. For almost a week he had worked on nothing but pure adrenaline, consuming little sleep and little nourishment. He wasn't in a place to admonish Sara on her methods to save her sister. He just hoped that she could see her plan for what it was worth - a suicidal one.

"Doesn't mean that I have to be comfortable with it."

Sara stilled, and felt a tiny twinge of guilt. Oliver was just trying to help, and she lashed out at him. They might not be together anymore, but she knew that he cared deeply for her and had her back no matter what.

"And I love you for that, I really do. But right now, if you're to have any chance at all in saving the city, it's going to have to be your sole focus. No distractions."

"Are you sure about this, Sara? Because the last thing I remember was you willing to kill yourself in order to leave the League."

"If it meant saving my sister, then yes," Sara responded brusquely.

Oliver let out a frustrated huff, running his fingers through his short, cropped hair. "I guess there's no way to persuade you to stay, then." He considered leaning in for a hug but settled for a hand on her shoulder. "Just... Be careful."

"Always."

"If it makes you feel better, I've designed this sonar tracking device that'll fit on the underside of one of your jacket's buttons." Felicity chimed in. "You won't even know that it's there. Which means that the League probably won't know it's there. Which also means that your chances of being skewered into a kebab are next to none. Basically, it emits a pulse from the transmitter to the one of the four receivers, which then re-routes the signal to one of the Pentium processors here in the Foundry. So what I'm saying is that I'll be able to find you no matter where you're at. Even if you're on a mountain. Not that Nanda Parbat's on a mountain. But you did say it got chilly there so I just assumed it's on a mountain. And I know that you're not supposed to say where it is, but still. I wanted to try. You never know when you might get lucky."

Sara couldn't help but burst out in laughter. Trust Felicity's babbling to make its appearance at the most inappropriate of times. But Sara was thankful that it took some of the tension off the inevitable goodbye. She hated goodbyes. Mostly because they always managed to elude her. She didn't have a chance at it before she was marooned on the island. And also before she fled Nanda Parbat for Starling City.

"You're cute. Thank you."

"You're welcome. And Sara…" Felicity's usual spry self was replaced by something uncharacteristically sombre. "Promise me you'll come back."

Sara paused. She knew that what she was doing was a huge gamble, and she didn't want to keep any promises she couldn't keep. The IT expert had been nothing but kind to her here in the Foundry. She had never been a girl's girl, but it was different with Felicity. Sara could never get enough of her incoherent rambling. She knew Felicity got annoyed by her lack of brain-mouth filter sometimes, but Sara found it endearing. She would miss her. And Oliver. And Diggle, who was always there with little nuggets of wisdom whenever she needed it. Even Roy, who was skulking at the back because he didn't know what to say, but she knew he was as worried as the others.

Sara took a deep breath, thinking of something that would assuage their fears without having to resort to pandering. She settled with an "I'll try", which seemed to satisfy Felicity. Shrugging on her leather jacket and making sure that her daggers and mask were safely hidden in the inner pockets, Sara gave Felicity a quick hug and left the Foundry. She just hoped that it wouldn't be her last time.

-/-

So maybe heading towards Nanda Parbat without a concrete plan in place was a rash decision. She had intended to come up with one during the trip there, but the ascension up the mountain proved to be easier than expected, and soon she found herself standing on its zenith. The hard part came after that. Sara was searching for someone. But she had no idea how she could find that person without being slaughtered by hundreds of enraged assassins.

It wasn't long before Sara found herself standing in front of a quaint little cabin. If Laurel was here, she would wrinkle her nose at how decrepit it looked. Granted, the cabin was small, the woodwork weathered with age, and the cedar shingles on the roof were chipping at places, but it felt like home. In fact, it was home, for three years of her life. It was her own safe haven in this life of killing, where she could pretend like the world outside didn't exist; where she could pretend that "international assassin" wasn't the most impressive thing on her resume.

Sara could see Nanda Parbat far off in the distance. It was an impenetrable fortress, complete with an elaborate assemblage of domes and minarets towering over the entire city. The thick fog did nothing to dull its grandeur. The occasional ray of sunlight glinted off the pillars carved out of solid gold, which supported the double-eaved roof that was painted a blood red, with intricate carvings running down its ridges. A three-tiered white marble terrace elevated the main halls, with only a long flight of granite stairs connecting it to the open courtyard. Guards were positioned at every entrance, and the place was fortified by wooden stakes lining its perimeter that looked more than capable of impaling anyone that tried to slip past it. Not that anyone would survive if they managed to. Nanda Parbat was home to the world's most deadly assassins, and Ra's al Ghul, the leader of them all, was possibly the most dangerous man ever to grace the face of the earth.

Sara sighed. It was cold, she was tired, and she didn't have a plan. Great.

Sara thought that the best course of action would be to seek refuge before she turned into a human-sized slab of ice. Which was completely possible, considering how she was so underdressed for the chilly weather. She mentally berated herself for not dressing warmer. It was so typical of her, to rush straight at everything headfirst without taking the consequences into account. One of the many downsides that came with her impetuous personality.

The cabin looked abandoned enough. Gingerly, she twisted the doorknob and couldn't stop the smile that escaped her lips when she heard the welcoming groan of the hinges against her weight. She remembered being so irked by that noise that she once spent a good half a day attempting to oil those rusted old things. It didn't work. Sara was thankful that it didn't. It was familiar, and right now, familiar was something foreign to her.

Looking around, Sara noticed that the place looked exactly the same, albeit a little dustier. She strode over to the kitchenette and sifted through the drawers, smiling fondly when she came across an assortment of porcelain crockery, complete with cutlery, plates and bowls. All of them were all white with a blue trimming running along the edges, and a blue phoenix was embellished in the centre. Sara bought them at a roadside stall on one of her earlier assignments in Beijing. She was thoroughly enthralled with the Chinese culture and took a particular shine to the legend of the phoenix. Fèng huáng, it was called. She liked how the Chinese portrayed the resplendent creature. It symbolised virtue, duty, and mercy. It was everything that Sara had hoped she would never lose even though she was knee-deep in this ruthless tirade of killing.

She continued walking around the parlour, pausing every now and then to fiddle with a few trinkets. Each one of them had a story to tell. The Matryoshka dolls lined up along the windowsill were from an assignment in Russia, where Sara bought them off a peddler, a girl no older than ten. She had gotten the tiny glass bottle of myrrh beside the dolls from India, where she had received it as a thank-you from an elderly merchant. The League had dealt with the infamous warlord Pyat Pree, who was tyrannising the common folk for money, or sex. Sara let out a bittersweet smile. She knew that there was plenty of red in her ledger, but she had hoped that by occasionally doing something that held a semblance of good, some of it would be wiped out.

Even so, the killings had weighed on her conscience, and with each subsequent kill, she felt increasingly bogged down by guilt. It was asphyxiating, like a slowly-tightening noose around her neck.

It wasn't so much of the killings as the reason behind the killings. Onboard the Amazo, she tortured and killed prisoners because Ivo had instructed her to. She couldn't risk incurring his wrath, since he was the sole reason why she wasn't locked up in a cage to be used as another potential experimentation. On Lian Yu, she had put bullets through the heads of countless mercenaries. There was no lack of blood on her hands. But she had done all that in order to survive.

It wasn't that different with the League, to be honest. She was bound by League law to perform her duties, to obliterate anyone that stood in the way of her and her target. Sometimes, her instructions were to obtain information. Those were the worst. Anyone was fair game - sons, daughters, spouses.

Once, she had been sent on an assignment to St. Petersburg. Her target was an affluent Russian businessman in his late thirties who was neck-deep in business with the mob. Sara had read his file. Human trafficking, money laundering, embezzlement - he had a hand in all of them. She had no qualms on resorting to torture on someone involved in such nefarious activities, but still, he had refused to give up information on their leader.

Just then his three year old daughter had walked into the room, complaining that his cries were too loud for her to sleep. It was then that Sara realised there was only one way for him to talk, and that wasn't to break his bones - but his spirit. Eventually, she had the information she needed, but also the blood of an innocent child on her hands.

Sara hated that life, but she didn't have much of a choice. It was either that, or death. It was for survival, too.

But yet, it was different. She no longer lived in constant fear of being killed in her sleep. She no longer lived in constant fear that one misstep could blast her entire body into nothingness. She no longer lived in constant fear that one day, she might lose the favour of a psychopathic scientist and become the next subject of his experimentations. Instead of a paltry bunk or a damp cavern, she slept on a featherbed lined with satin sheets. How could she live in such opulence and still justify that as survival? How could she allow herself to be happy and receive love when she was the reason why so many families were left broken?

The sound of her own teeth chattering pulled Sara out of her reverie. She was so wrapped up in her nostalgia-fuelled reminisce that she forgot about the chilly winds that were threatening to put her out of commission. She could feel herself losing sensation in her fingers and toes. She would be damned if she had travelled all the way here only to succumb to frostbite.

Sara spied the axe in the corner, lodged between two loose floorboards. She swallowed. She was the one who had left it there. So it hadn't been moved for the last few months. Maybe she did have to go to Nanda Parbat after all.

Picking up the axe, Sara left to chop up firewood. After passing by a couple of trees that looked too frail for the job, she spotted a few evergreens that looked sturdy enough. Positioning both feet firmly on the ground, she swung the axe, felling one of them in a few blows. She made quick work of the others. Gathering the fallen logs, she started making her way back as the first snowflake fell, with its sinewy tendrils of ice. Then another, and another. Soon, the earthen ground was painted an ebony white. Sara exhaled deeply. She had spent her last snowfall here at Nanda Parbat, and back then, she had thought that would be her last. She didn't know if she was happy to be back, or scared, or both. Everything was just an amalgamation of emotions, and Sara didn't want to reconcile them. She didn't know if she could.

From the corner of her eye, Sara thought she saw a fleeting glimpse of movement; a flash of black amongst acres of forest. Squinting through the billowing gusts of wind, she searched for a potential intruder but found none. She chalked it up to the fog playing tricks on her eyes and continued trudging back to the cabin, paying no heed to mask her heavy footfalls as the howl of the wind took care of that.

Upon reaching the cabin, Sara fumbled with the doorknob, her numb fingers refusing to cooperate. Cursing under her breath, she freed her hands from the firewood and succeeded in getting the door open. She bent over and haphazardly chucked the pieces into the cabin one after another when she heard a dull metallic crunch that sounded like the heel of a boot meeting wood.

Sara slowly tilted her head upwards, diverting her attention away from the logs to the source of the noise.

She wasn't alone.

There was someone else standing beside the fireplace.

"Nyssa," she breathed.

-/-

A/N: And I'm done with the first chapter of this fic! Comments? I'd love to hear what you guys think!

Also, did anyone catch the subtle Game of Thrones/The Avengers reference? ;)