❛ It's not over ❜

Sitting on her bed and flipping through her journal filled with ever last thought from the island and later, Annabelle worried about Oliver and his last charade. Ever since he had boldly slipped away at Big Belly Burger, he hadn't made any contact with her, and that concerned her more than usual because Rob was not amused when he had to drive Annabelle home and slip into the night to find his other client.

Anna had gotten out of going to interrogate Matt Istook by complaining of a large headache to her boyfriend and instantly he made her stay back and collect more research. At any given time she would normally be clicking through link after link and article after article, but instead, she was staring at the words scribbled on the worn pages of her journal. She was reminded of the hell she was forced to call 'home' for years. No matter how much it pained her to remember the island, she was addicted to staring at her cries of mercy. She persuaded herself life would be better, but yet her words contradicted her own thoughts.

Anna's finger grazed over a memory, one of the first few she had recorded. She observed the simple words that were filled with so much pain, so much hate and anger. And she was immediately pulled back into the time it was written, she felt everything, every emotion, every sense, every feeling. 

"I heard them talking today," Anna whispered, her fingers working to gently break a piece of bread apart. The blonde sitting across from her on the floor looked up, her eyes meeting Anna's. "What'd they say? Any closer to the cure?" she wondered, raising an eyebrow and taking a bite of the 'meal' they had been given. Anna scoffed and shook her head, pulling her knees to her chest for extra warmth, "No, not the soldiers, not Ivo," she replied, looking down at her hands that fumbled with her food.

"I heard the prisoners," she bluntly stated, making Sara's eyes go wide. The younger girl transitioned her body so she was sitting up straight and she slightly leaned forward in anticipation, "Ivo told us not to talk with them, he told us to stay away fr--"

"They are not rabid, Sara," Anna interrupted, eyeing her companion with slight judgment, "They are humans in a seemingly horrible situation, and they are confused, mortified even," she objected. "If you believe that so strongly then why did you agree to support this cause?" Sara questioned.

"Everything you see me do from this point forward, everything I say, just know, I am doing it for you. We are going to survive, and we will see our parents once more, Starling City will be there, just how we left it. This is for us," she responded, watching as Sara's eyes softened and she nodded slowly, chewing the last bit of her bread.

"What did you hear them say?" she asked her friend. With a simple sigh and letting her head fall back against the concrete wall, Anna pursed her lips in thought. "Shengcun."

Anna's eyes snapped open and darted to the book resting in her lap. In a single motion, she slammed the covers closed and took a deep breath, the effects of the memory still roaming her mind. She stared absentmindedly at the covers beneath her for a moment to let the details sink in. The word that she had heard from Anatoly slipped off her lips and it brought about a small smile, "Shengcun," she muttered.

She let her left hand roam to the hem of her tank top and as she slowly pulled it up, she saw the same word tattooed in old lettering on her hip. Shengcun, she reminded herself. Survive.

•••

Anna had stood in the foyer of the mansion while observing the pictures when Oliver wandered through the door with a smile. It was a smile Anna only got to see on rare occasions and she couldn't help but smirk and place a hand on his chest when he approached her. "Look at you, Mr. Perfect Teeth," she grinned, pecking his lips while his arms wrapped around her waist. "Cute," he chuckled while staring into her eyes, "Guess I just made a little progress in this case and thought I could stretch out my lips," he shrugged.

Anna grew serious at the mention of progress and pulled away from her boyfriend, "What happened?" she asked with pure wonder. Oliver sighed, "Well, I tracked down Matt Istook - he's afraid of trains, by the way - and I convinced him to give me a file."

"A file?" Anna asked, narrowing her eyes at the man in front of her. "Yeah, it contained all the information that he lied about to the police. I gave it to Laurel and she's looking into it," he explained.

Anna pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes in confusion. She let the fact the Oliver had handcuffed this man to a railroad track in order to get the location of the file sink in, and then the fact that he had personally delivered the file to Laurel after previously talking with her that night. "Don't you think Laurel is a bit too involved in this now?" she questioned, reaching up to fix Oliver's top button and smooth out his collar.

The man just shrugged and let his girlfriend be picky over his outfit, "We're more than capable of swooping in to save her. Besides, we need the law on our side somehow, and she's our ticket into the gala."

Anna rolled her eyes at his analogy and was about to reply before the front door opened and Rob stood in its entryway with a very pissed off look on his face. "Rob," Oliver welcomed, turning around to greet the man. "You gotta' keep up," he smirked before turning on his heel and walking away without a care in the world. Anna looked between her bodyguard and her boyfriend before letting a faint whistle leave her mouth as she innocently excused herself from the situation. After all, she was the saint.

•••

Seeing that Oliver was busy with finding a way into Iron Heights - Anna didn't question it, after all, this was their life now - Anna had taken the liberty of meeting with Laurel. The attorney didn't hesitate to wonder where her companion was, and Anna had to make an excuse. "Where's your partner? The guy I talked to last night? He told me what to do, and he gave me this file--"

"Matt Istook's file," Anna interrupted while facing sideways so Laurel wouldn't be able to see her eyes. "He told me, we work together, which means I know what he knows, sometimes more," she continued. "He was busy, that's not important."

"Well that won't matter much, no matter what Istook said or didn't say, I can't file for habeas corpus, the request was denied," the woman explained, staring at the black hood that rested upon Anna's head. "It's not over," the vigilante replied quickly. "I'm an attorney, I know when it's over," Laurel fired back with no understanding. 

"What do you need to free Peter Declan?" Anna demanded, her voice modifier quickly dying out and with dire need of recharging. "At this point, nothing short of a signed confession from Brodeur," she responded uneasily, clearly unsure of how a vigilante could acquire that.

Anna quickly looked at the ground and pinched her eyes closed while thinking. She knew what needed to be done, she needed to get that confession no matter what. So with a newfound determination and the amazing feeling of no stomach pains, she launched forwards and began walking to the edge of the roof. 

Laurel called after her, "Where are you going?"

And with no hesitation and a grip on the bow by her side, Anna turned around to look at her once more, but being sure to lower her eyes, "To get a confession," she coldly replied before firing an arrow at the nearest building and leaping off with a sense of exhilaration running through her lungs.

She had already set a location and mapped it out before meeting with Laurel. She knew something would happen, something that would make her have a need to visit Brodeur. She, of course, wasn't positive, but as she traveled by rooftops and back alleyways to get to Brodeur's office, she knew that there was no time to brief Oliver. Brodeur Chemical needed to be stopped, and as she slammed through the glass window of his office on the sixteenth floor of B.C.'s tower, she instantly rolled on the ground and rushed to her feet with her bow directed to Brodeur's chest as he backed against the wall in fear.

"Jason Brodeur," she growled, tightening her grip on the weapon. The man quivered in fear and tilted his head to the side to avoid looking at his new enemy, "What do you want?" he whimpered, sweat already dripping down his face.

"You're going to confess that you arranged to have Peter Declan's wife murdered," Anna warned. "What, so I can take his place in prison?" he scoffed, finding new confidence and bringing his hand to his chest to 'plead' with the vigilante as if he had done no wrong. "So you can avoid the death penalty," she barked back. 

"Except if I'm dead," the man began with the thinking that him sassing Anna would let him win, but he didn't know that Anna hated people using their attitude to get them places, "Well, then you've got no one to pin Camille's murder on. You need me to exonerate Peter Declan," he grinned, holding his hands out to exaggerate his point. "Maybe you could try to force me to sign a confession or something."

Anna raised an eyebrow at the man and waited until he was done before moving her bow to point to his hand and fire the arrow right through his palm. The man screamed and stared at the purple tipped arrow in the center of his hand and he whimpered in pain. "That might be difficult," Anna said in return, staring at the hand she successfully punctured.

Brodeur continued to whine and cry in pain when his phone rang, disrupting the atmosphere in the room. Anna stepped forward and reached into his jacket pocket, grabbing the phone and holding it out for him, "Just answer it," she demanded. 

She pressed the accept button and held an inch from Brodeur's mouth as he calmed himself to obey the vigilante, "What?" he snapped.

"It's Ankov, it's going down, one hour," the guy on the other end reported. Anna ended the call and glared at her victim, "What's going down in an hour?" she inquired fearlessly. When he didn't answer, she stepped closer, now invading his personal space, "What?" she shouted.

"Let's just say, Peter Declan's execution is getting moved up."

Upon hearing this, frustration grew inside Anna and she thrust her fist into an uppercut and completely knocked Brodeur out. She used her same method of the window and zipline, except she wasn't riding for fun. She instantly got Oliver on the comms. with anything but good news. "What happened?" he wondered as she zipped through the Starling City skyline. "Brodeur has mobility in one hand now," she said first, "And something is going down at Iron Heights, I think they're planning to kill Declan within the hour," she added. "And then here's the bad news, Laurel is on her way there now."

•••

Oliver and Anna had both agreed that Anna had done her part for the night and that Oliver would take this Iron Heights shift. Besides, by the time Anna got there, it would have been one hour. Oliver was able to make it just under that, making him the better choice. But that didn't mean it was the safest choice. Anna was tracking him, making sure everything was going to plan, but she when she wasn't getting responses after hearing shouts and cries and grunts, she began worried. 

"Oliver! Oliver, what's going on?" Anna shouted into her comm. set as she sat in her bedroom listening to Oliver's progress. Again, she heard nothing. All he heard was the background commotion of a fist colliding with flesh, and it made her cringe even though she should have been used to the sound. 

But then, all at once, there was nothing. The sound diminished and was replaced by Oliver's heavy breathing and footsteps. She suspected he was leaving, and when he was in a clear space outside on the fire escape, he replied to his partner, "Declan is safe, so is Laurel, it's done," he told the girl.

"Safe? I did not hear safe. What the hell happened, Queen?"

"The prisoners were freed, and I had trouble with Ankov - Brodeur's guy - but I took care of it, let's leave it at that."

"We'll leave it at that until you come home, alright? Just... don't do anything stupid. This is a two-person team."

Anna couldn't bear to hear the response that would come from Oliver so she shut off the communication system and tossed her headset on the bed away from her. She was tired of this, tired of fighting and worrying, tired of lying just when they returned. She thought things would be different, that they would be done with the Russian Mob, done with the Chinese Triad, done with arrows and masks. Yet, they were back where they started, doing the thing that turned them into monsters in the first place. 

She realized this more and more as she closed her eyes and let her mind drift into a place she never wanted to revisit. Yet it did, every night, every blink, every yawn.

Anna leaned against the wall with her eyes closed. She listened to the rhythmic drip of the leak in the ceiling as it splattered against the concrete below her. She found peace in it, hearing the pattern that didn't change, it offered a sense of uniformity, something she hadn't seen in such a long while.

She could have listened to that drip for hours if not for hearing Sara's stomach growl next to her. It made her snap open her eyes and look to the girl in concern, already understanding that a serving of soup and bread was not enough to last either of the girls an entire day. "I'm fine, Bella," Sara whispered, her eyes still shut as she too listened to the dripping water. "Sara, take my soup, please," Anna begged, ready to rise to her feet to get the bowl from the table in the corner. Sara's hand reached out quickly and wrapped around Anna's wrist before she stood, "Anna, please," she began, "Don't stress over me, you need to eat."

Anna sighed and sat back down, trying to refocus on the drip of the water once more, "I heard them again, Sara," she spoke, closing her eyes and leaning against the wall. "They were crying, screaming, maybe," she continued, not noticing Sara open her eyes to watch the older girl speak. "They looked at me, observed even, and again I heard 'shengcun.' It was peaceful this time, a request maybe. It means survive, Sara. We can't survive from a portion of soup, nor a slice of bread. The only way we are going to survive is if we have each other, understand?"

"You have to stop listening to them, Anna. They are corrupting you. Anthony said--"

"He deserves no such name, Sara. I call him Ivo because people with hearts get first names. He's labeled these people off as science experiments. I don't care what he said, I am here for survival, I am here for you. And I'll ask you again, do you understand that we are only going to survive if we have each other?"

With a simple sigh, Sara reached out and grabbed Anna's hand, letting her fingers entwine in her's, "I understand."

Anna took a deep breath before deciding to return to reality. She blinked open her eyes, almost expecting to see a concrete room surrounding her and a frail blonde by her side. But she didn't, and when she lifted her hand she felt nothing but cold air, and not the warm presence of her best friend. 

It took her moments to gather enough strength to push herself off the bed and get up. She decided to walk to Oliver's room and maybe sit at his desk to wait for him. She wanted to be in a space that didn't make her feel empty and lonely, a space she was familiar with, even if it was a charade.

So she pushed open his door and first noticed his bed perfectly made just the way Raisa normally prepared it. It brought a small grin to her face as the saw the familiarity and she immediately made her way to it, already decked in her pajamas. She and Oliver normally shared a bed anyways, though it was usually Anna's. But she knew he wouldn't mind sleeping in his for a change.

So instead of sitting at his desk like she planned, she decided to pull back his covers and slide under the warm sheets that carried the scent of her boyfriend. The combination made her feel safe, and her plan to stay awake for him and ask him for the details of the mission faded away once her head hit the pillow and she realized just how tired she was. She fell asleep almost instantly with her body embraced by the warm sheets and the soft pillow her head sunk in to.

Because she was asleep she didn't notice the door open downstairs and Oliver come trotting into the house in a sweater and jeans. He first made his way to Anna's room, like usual, because he knew she wanted to talk and he just wanted to put on pajamas and snuggle close with her and catch some much-needed rest, But when he didn't find her there and instead saw all the lights off and her bed sheets still perfectly intact, he made his way to his room.

When he opened the door, the first thing he noticed was how his lights were more dim than usual, and the second thing he saw was how his girlfriend was sleeping peacefully on his side of the bed. 

It brought a small smile to his face and he quickly changed into his comfortable pajama pants and switched the light off. He climbed into bed next to the sleeping woman and scooted in close so he could wrap his arms around her. She melted into his touch and leaned back against him with her hands now wrapped over his. She was asleep, yet she could hear him whisper "I love you," before kissing her head and closing his eyes.

Her tired self smiled a bit before replying so quiet that Oliver could barely hear "I love you, too," and then she was out like a light, nothing but her soft breathing filling the silent room. 

Oliver found peace hearing the quiet breathing of his love and knew she was taking a much-needed sleep. He just didn't know that this job wasn't affecting her sleep schedule as much as her mental health, and that was something he may never know.

•••

They had both gotten the rest hey needed after two exhausting shifts of being their alter-egos. They were two successful shifts, however, because they had assisted Laurel Lance in her trial of proving Peter Declan innocent. Their hard work had paid off yet again, and their proof was the newly crossed off name in Robert Queen's book.

Yet, their work didn't seem to be done. They had a meeting, this tie as Annabelle Carter and Oliver Queen. Together they walked down the grand stairs and walked into the living room to see John Diggle standing by the window. Anna looked at Oliver who showed no emotion yet she could tell he was smiling on the inside. "You here for the bodyguard position?" he asked carefully. "The new guy just quit."

"No, I'm not. I'm here about the other position," he replied, bringing a small smirk to Anna's face as she watched Oliver extend his hand for the new teammate. "Just to be clear, I'm not signing on to be a sidekick."

"Want to be a babysitter, we could use one of those?" Anna chuckled, watching Diggle grin at her before reaching to shake Oliver's hand. "But you're right, fighting for this city needs to be done and you're going to do this with or without me," Diggle said. Oliver nodded a "Yeah," before realizing Diggle was in fact not finished. "But with me, there'll be fewer casualties, including both of you."

"Diggle, I'm not looking for anybody to save me," Oliver replied. "Maybe not," Diggle shrugged, "But you both need someone just the same. You are fighting a war, except you have no iea what war does to you. How it scrapes off little pieces of your soul. And you need someone to remind you of who you are, not this thing you're becoming," he said, this time looking at Anna as she shook his hand in acceptance.

The group of three smiled, but just for a second, because after that, the door was busted open and a group of police barged inside, "Oliver Queen," a man called out, walking past Walter who began to protest and argue on their entrance. "You can't just barge in here," he scolded, stopping Lance at the doorway, "Yeah? Well, I got a badge and a gun that say different," he snapped while moving past the British man.

"What the hell's going on?" Oliver demanded while stepping out into the foyer with Diggle and Anna close behind. "Lance! What is this?" Anna shouted while rushing past her boyfriend and to go meet the man that treated her like a daughter. "Oliver, what's happening?" Thea called from the staircase as she finally exited her room for the first time that day.

"Oliver Queen, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice, aggravated assault, trespassing, acting as a vigilante," Lance growled as Thea shouted for Walter to do something and Moira reached for her son that was already in handcuffs. "Are you out of your mind?" Oliver shouted before Lance glared at the man and said "and murder," before grabbing Oliver's shoulder and walking him forward with Luteineant Pike trailing behind while listing his Miranda rights.

The police left the house as quickly as the entered and left Walter, Diggle, Thea, Moira, and Anna in the foyer with anger, confusion, disbelief, and denial floating their minds. 

Oliver Queen was going to prison, but the only truth was that there was no such thing as double jeopardy.