When Digg and Lyla finally got there, they were followed down by Oliver, Roy, and Sara. Felicity had finally managed to drag herself over to sit on her tech desk and was examining the injury in the reflection of her blank computer screens. It didn't give her a very clear picture, but she could tell that her wooziness came from a loss of blood and pain, rather than just shock. At that point, Felicity would have taken the shock.

"My God, Felicity!" Oliver and Digg both burst. Digg rushed to her and began examining the arrow stuck into Felicity's chest. He looked over his shoulder to Lyla, who was now swatting Felicity's hands away from the the protruding arrow. "Can you call Hamilton?" he asked.

"No," Felicity refused stubbornly, "involving Emil would mean answering questions and giving him more information than he strictly needs to know. It's better if you just do it and get it over with."

"Speaking of answering questions," Sara began pointedly. Her gaze and voice softened as she looked at Felicity's injured state, "What happened, Fliss?"

"I came down to the lair to check on my systems," Felicity explained through gritted teeth. "I was just walking down the stairs and then suddenly I had an arrow in me. Not much else in between those two events is making sense to me right now though." She looked at Oliver and Digg, and said, "But the archer . . . He was dressed like an assassin from The League, but not quite. Just like Malcolm Merlyn as the Dark Archer." Her eyes flickered briefly to Digg's own with a meaningful gleam in them.

Roy met her gaze with a grimace. "God, Felicity, you look like hell."

"Thanks, Roy," Felicity spat sarcastically in return, snapping out of her silent conversation with Diggle. "Shut up." She turned her head back toward her guys and Sara. "Can you please just get this thing the hell out of me?" she begged them.

Oliver crouched down to look more closely at where the shaft of the arrow had punctured Felicity's chest. "You lost a fair amount of blood," he told her before lifting his gaze to hers, "but good on you for not trying to pull the arrow out yourself." He smiled weakly at her with relief and pride.

Felicity squeezed her eyes shut. "It's an arrow. You're going to have to push it clean through me to get it out, aren't you?" she asked knowingly.

Digg nodded. "It's gonna hurt like hell," he told her honestly.

"John!" Lyla scolded him from behind Felicity. She put her hands on the younger girl's shoulders.

"No, it's okay," Felicity said. "I don't need it sugarcoated, I just need the truth."

Digg looked at her for a long moment. "Are you sure you don't want me to call Dr. Hamilton?" he asked. "You know no one in this room is a doctor, right?"

Felicity shook her head, "No. No, I'm sure. Just get it out and get it over with."

"Fliss, I think I should give you a couple aspirins before we try to remove the arrow," Digg continued to move off the subject. "And you're going to need a blood transfusion after this."

"We can do it here," Sara murmured quietly, stepping protectively next to Felicity. "She's AB-positive. Universal recipient. Any of us except for Lyla can give blood to her."

Lyla frowned and rested her hand on the back of Felicity's neck. "If I weren't pregnant, I'd give you a whole gallon, Fliss," the mother-to-be half-joked.

Felicity laughed despite the pain it caused her. "Maybe next time," she suggested as Digg handed her a pair of his 'aspirins' and she downed them.

"Yeah, no," Oliver told her sternly. "This is not going to be a recurring thing, Felicity."

Sara sent Oliver a glare, clearly telling him to back off. If anyone was going to be terse and protective of Felicity, it was going to be her. Sara was the girlfriend. Felicity was hers. As the two had mutually established, that gave Sara the right to be upset and worried, because she loved Felicity more than life itself and, if anything ever happened to Felicity, Sara would be made the would-have-been widow. It scared her to think like that, but she would have been lying if she said that the thought hadn't haunted her in her worst nightmares.

"Let's just get this thing out of her and figure this out so I can go beat up whoever did this to her," Sara growled darkly. "Let's see how this moron likes having an arrow through the chest."

No one even thought to scold her for the threat. Maybe it was because it was just the five of them and Lyla, who were all well aware of Sara's dark past, or maybe it was because seeing Felicity like this made them all feel a little murderous, but Sara didn't think it mattered really. She didn't know if she could hunt this attacker down without killing him in return for the life that he had nearly cost them, but she definitely wasn't taking a backseat on this one. No one messed with her girl.

She wrapped one of Felicity's hands around one of her own and closed her other hand over it. "It's going to hurt a lot, baby."

"It hurt a lot a minute ago, gorgeous, but it feels better now," Felicity hummed. Clearly the drugs were taking effect, if Felicity's crossed eyes were anything to go by. She nuzzled her nose against Sara's cheek. "You're pretty . . ."

Sara smiled despite herself at Felicity's loopy compliment. "It's going to hurt a lot again, but I'm right here, okay? I've got you."

Lyla took a place on Felicity's other side and grabbed her other hand while Oliver and Digg took respective places in front of and behind her. Digg would push the arrow through her so that Oliver could get enough of a grip to pull it the rest of the way out. Sara kissed Felicity's forehead and hand before settling it into her right one, so she could wrap her left arm around Felicity's back. When Digg looked at her for the go-ahead, she and Lyla sandwiched Felicity tightly between them so she wouldn't move so much, and then she nodded to Digg.

Felicity screamed as the arrow was pushed through her and Sara nearly started crying right then and there as she tried to hold her girlfriend still. It was horrible and traumatic listening to Felicity screech deafeningly in immeasurable pain, sobbing and crying and pleading them all to make it stop, 'make it stop, PLEASE!'. Sara felt it when Oliver was able to get a firm grip on the arrow tip and he pulled it through and straight out of Felicity's shoulder in one quick, clean, and even motion. He tossed it behind him and grabbed a towel to staunch the flow of blood.

"Digg stitch up the entry, I'll stitch up the exit," Oliver instructed. "Sara, get the transfusion ready."

Sara met Lyla's eyes over Felicity's head.

"Go," Lyla told her. "I've got her. She'll be okay."

"Felicity?" Oliver called loudly to her. "Can you move your arm now?"

Felicity tried it and, despite it causing a new wave of searing pain to crash over her, she was able to move her arm. "Y-yeah," she choked out. "I-I can." Despite having taken two oxycodons not twenty minutes earlier, Felicity seemed to be coming back to lucidity at a miraculous speed.

Oliver met Digg's eyes briefly as they both finished sewing Felicity's wounds. "That's good," he told the other man. "It means it hit a nerve, nothing else. All her muscles, tendons, ligaments, and everything else are still intact."

The two men stood back so Sara could start a line from her open vein to Felicity's newly-inserted needle. Sara looked her girlfriend in the face when her blood was following freely into Felicity. "You said the man that shot you looked like Malcolm Merlyn," Sara prompted.

"Malcolm Merlyn is dead," Oliver said as he searched around for the arrow they had taken out of Felicity. He walked over to pick it up when he found it. "Razor tip, serrated four-blade arrowhead made of heavy-duty, lightweight titanium. Balanced carbon fiber shaft." His eyes rose to meet Diggle's look. "Dark fletchings." Oliver's expression was one of utter shock as he added, "And it was made by Sagittarius."

"Just like Merlyn," Digg stated.

A dark shadow fell across Oliver's features. "Except Merlyn is dead," he repeated.

"Whoever this Dark Archer groupie is, let's just consider ourselves lucky that he's not as good a shot as the real Malcolm Merlyn," Lyla interrupted, looking over at them as she taped gauze over the needle prick in Felicity's elbow and packed up the emergency transfusion kit for a woozy Sara.

"Except he might be," Sara said. She looked weakened and pale from giving Felicity her blood, but her voice was strong and confident, leaving no suspicions that she was speaking out of delirium.

"What do you mean?" Roy asked.

Sara sat forward, leaning her elbows against her knees. "I've seen this sort of shot before," she explained, "in The League. It's meant to maim, not kill."
"Oh. He didn't mean to kill me," Felicity began, voice dripping with satire. "Great! I feel so much better now."
"Whoever this guy is, he isn't an amateur," Sara continued, looking at the boys and Lyla. "We're dealing with an old pro."

"But if he's an old pro, then why has he stayed dormant for so long?" Oliver asked.

Digg and Felicity exchanged nervous glances, and Digg nodded that it was finally time to tell them the truth about A.R.G.U.S. and Dark Archer II.

Felicity sighed. "He hasn't," she said, catching everyone's attention.

"What?" Oliver asked, his eyes narrowing and his voice growing stern and suspicious.

Felicity really didn't want to tell him. In fact, if she hadn't wanted to tell Oliver before this, then she really, really, really didn't want to tell him now. She tried to look to Diggle for help, but he seemed to be otherwise engaged in a silent argument with his wife. She saw the blatant confusion from Roy and then she met Sara's hesitant and even distrusting stare.

"He hasn't been dormant. A.R.G.U.S. calls him 'Dark Archer II'," she explained quietly, looking at her palms to avoid looking at her friends or Sara. "They have no idea who he could really be, and neither do I." Felicity stood, wincing at the shift of her body, and walked over to her systems. She began unlocking all the files that she had kept password protected until now and spreading the documents and the only photograph the agency had been able to capture of Dark Archer II out across the display of screens. "At first it was just little things, spottings here and there, barely noticeable. Then there were murders, dozens of guards killed during break-ins to government research and development facilities, armed bank robberies resulting in the deaths of security officers and bank staff, and every single time in a different location, everywhere from Gotham City to San Francisco, Metropolis, Central City, Monument Point to New York City, and now here in Starling, I guess."

Oliver pinned her down with a concerned look. "Well, how long have you known about this?" he asked. "A few days . . . ? A few weeks . . . ?"

The IT-girl couldn't meet Oliver's anxious gaze, so she looked to Diggle who had since finished his debate with Lyla. "I first started noticing the files right after we rescued those girls who had been abducted by The Caravan, but I thought that maybe it was just a copycat or an LoA assassin. After Sara got shot by Limerick, I started looking deeper into A.R.G.U.S.'s secure database and I found more but never enough to solidify a theory."

"Felicity, that was seven months ago!" Oliver roared in outrage.

He was half-expecting Sara to punch him just for getting so angry at Felicity, but Sara only sat there, quiet and contemplative with a dark expression on her face that Oliver hadn't seen since Sara had first reappeared in Starling City as The Canary. Sara knew more about Malcolm Merlyn and The Dark Archer than all of the rest of them put together. She had known him when she was a child, following Laurel and Oliver and Tommy around, much to her sister's constant annoyance. She had known him as a member of The League of Assassins, training under Ra's al Ghul himself. She knew Merlyn from the destruction of The Glades and the lives lost to the man-made quake and the downward spiral that Laurel had taken after Tommy Merlyn's death. Malcolm Merlyn may have been dead, but his dark, dangerous, and lethal legacy had apparently been passed onto to an admirer, or maybe even an apprentice. Felicity didn't seem to understand the severity of withholding this knowledge from them for so long, and Oliver felt strange and uncomfortable being the one who knew Sara better than Felicity for once.

"How could you not have told anyone about this?" he demanded. "What if this second Dark Archer had killed you and we would have never even known he existed?!"

"I told Digg!" Felicity defended herself lamely.

Oliver whirled around on his partner. "You knew about this?"

"So did I," Lyla added, just to lay all the cards out on the table.

"God! Did everyone know about this but me?" he exclaimed.

There was a still silence that followed for several moments, until it was broken by Sara's barely audible murmur of, "I didn't."

They all turned to look at her as she sat by quietly. To everyone else she just seemed upset, but Felicity knew that it was more. She could tell from the detached and distrusting look in Sara's clear gray-green eyes that the walls that Sara had built to keep herself from getting hurt emotionally – the walls that Felicity had spent over a year coaxing down – were now being raised again. Once again, Sara was shutting down, and it killed Felicity to watch it happen. Especially because of her.

As the apartment door closed shut behind Felicity and the stiflingly tense silence surrounded her, she looked to Sara's turned back. They didn't fight with each other very often, but Felicity knew Sara's defensive stance when she saw it, and from the way Sara's shoulders and back were tensing up, Felicity knew that she was seeing it now. She could tell from the change in the air that Sara had now moved past her shock and detachment and into anger and bitter resentment. It was all Felicity could do to keep calm as she felt the waves of silent fury rolling off of Sara before the other woman had even begun speaking.

"Why–? What–? How?" Sara demanded as she turned to face Felicity. Her face was a perfect mask of anger, worry, hurt, and betrayal, and her voice was already harsh and loud. Sara's gray-green eyes flashed dangerously as she looked at Felicity with a glare that could cut through glass. "How could you not tell me that you knew Malcolm Merlyn had a successor who was running around putting arrows into people?! What the hell were you thinking, Felicity?! Why would you keep that from me?!"

"To protect you!" Felicity yelled back, feeling desperate to explain herself.

"Protect me from what?!" Sara screamed. "The truth?!"

"From yourself!" Felicity snapped with equal volume and aggression.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Felicity knew from the way that Sara's stance and expression shifted that what she had said had come out all wrong.

Sara took a half-step back, feeling like her heart had just cracked in her chest. "Oh. Wow," she remarked in a suddenly emotionless tone.

Felicity watched as her girlfriend walked into their bedroom. The expression on Sara's face before she walked away had been unreadable, but Felicity had seen the hurt shining in her eyes. It made Felicity feel as if someone had punched her in the stomach (and yes, she was all too familiar with how that felt). Sara closed the door but left it open just a crack, a silent sign to Felicity that she needed a moment to herself to gather her thoughts and calm herself down before either of them said anything more to one another.

. . .

To give Sara the time she needed to process everything on her own, Felicity went into the bathroom to change out of her blood-stained clothes and shower off the blood that had dried across her chest and abdomen. It felt surreal to think that earlier that same day she had been in the very same shower with Sara, both of them wrapped up in a bubble of euphoria and pleasure, blissful, and so together on so many different levels. Now, it seemed that that bubble had finally popped and they were now dealing with the inevitable fall out.

Felicity felt ashamed for having kept such a huge secret from Sara, a secret which had only led to Felicity once again being harmed and Sara having to witness it. Of all the things in the world that Sara could have, and maybe at one point in her life had, been afraid of, Felicity knew that Sara feared the two of them losing one another the most. It scared Felicity too. It was what had led her to keeping the information on Dark Archer II between herself and Diggle. In hindsight, she could see the flaws in her logic, but while she had been impaired by her fear of losing the love of her life, it had all made so much sense.

The shower was painful, to say the least. Oliver and Digg had done so well with stitching her up that even a nitpicky medical expert like Dr. Hamilton would have commended them on it, but the hot water thrumming against her broken skin still felt like a thousand tiny needles stabbing her all at once. Felicity thought about calling the doctor to recommend something for the pain, which seemed worse now than when the arrow had actually been slicing through her skin and bone. If Oliver was right and the shot had been meant to maim and not kill, then it was definitely having its desired effect, Felicity thought. She wondered if the pain she felt on the outside was equal to even a fraction of the pain she had inadvertently caused Sara, and another bolt of guilt shot through her like lightning.

Felicity realized, she had a lot of apologizing to do.

. . .

When Felicity came into their bedroom after her shower, Sara contemplated pretending to be asleep, but she knew that after so many months of sharing a bed, Felicity could tell whether or not Sara was really sleeping. It was a wonder why Sara couldn't tell when Felicity was hiding something from her. It was a petty thought, but one that she couldn't seem to shake regardless.

She sighed heavily. Sara hated fighting with Felicity. Although she would never admit it, fighting with Felicity made her feel afraid and alone, as if the one person who she could always count on to be in her corner had suddenly turned against her. She knew it was a melodramatic notion, and Sara knew that Felicity would never really be against her, even if it sometimes felt like it. Felicity always had a well-intended reason behind her decisions and, despite her immediate reaction to the one Felicity had given her this time, Sara suspected that now was no different.

Sara felt Felicity lay down on the bed behind her, keeping a palpable distance between their bodies, but running her fingers through Sara's hair in a soothing gesture. "Are you still too angry at me to talk about this?" Felicity asked carefully.

After a moment's hesitation, Sara slowly turned around to face Felicity and grabbed the hand that Felicity had been skimming through her hair. "A little," she admitted honestly. "But it's more like, I just don't understand why you would hide something like this from me." She looked into Felicity's deeply regretful blue eyes and continued, "We don't lie to each other, Felicity. We don't keep secrets. We don't hide things from one another. We tell each other everything, even if we don't always want to hear it. So I don't understand why this time you decided to keep this from me."

Felicity set her hand on the side of Sara's face. "Because I was trying to protect you," she explained quietly, "from doing something impulsive and dangerous. I love– I love that you care so much about this family, Sara, but you know that if I had told you about this, you would have set out to bring down Dark Archer 2.0. You would have run straight at this guy without even thinking of the risks or the possible repercussions. If this man is anything like his predecessor, Sara, he– would– kill– you, and I couldn't even stand the thought of that happening. I love you too much to lose you now. You are everything to me, Sara Lance."

"So instead, you took the risk of him killing you and none of the rest of us knowing anything about it except for Digg?" Sara asked, pointing out the flip side to Felicity's plan. "Don't you know that I can't lose you either? This relationship goes both ways, Felicity, that's why we agreed to always be honest with each other."

"I know, I know," Felicity said, setting the hand of her injured arm on Sara's hip and rubbing her thumb over her girlfriend's waist. "I just wanted to know more about him before I told you or Oliver about the second archer. I wanted to know enough to be able to have a plan ready for you when you inevitably took a run at him." She met Sara's eyes and a single tear fell from her eye and slid down her cheek. "I am really sorry for lying to you, Sara, but I won't apologize for trying to keep the love of my life out of danger. I can't spend forever with you if you're dead, baby."

Sara raised her hand to Felicity's cheek and wiped her tears away. She leaned in closer to Felicity and kissed her lips gently before pulling away to look into her eyes again. "I love you so much, Felicity Smoak, but so help me God, if you ever lie to me about something like this again, I will kill you myself and then I will bring you back so I can scream at you while you're cleaning up the mess," Sara told her without so much as even a hint of humor in her tone. "No more secrets, no more lies, no more withholding information from each other. I know that I am reckless and impulsive sometimes, Felicity, but I trust you and I need you to trust me too. I would never do anything that would risk one of us losing the other. Okay?"

"Okay," Felicity agreed, letting her forehead rest against Sara's own. "Promise?" Felicity questioned.

Sara nodded against Felicity's forehead. "Promise," she answered.

"Good," Felicity sighed.

Her lips met Sara's mouth in hungry, desperate brushes. Sara began to take her shirt off and Felicity helped her pull it off over her head. Their kiss deepened, tongues sliding against one another, neither fighting for dominance but simply coming together, over and over. Felicity wrapped both her arms around Sara's bare waist, only wincing slightly at the pain of moving her shoulder. She crawled back onto the bed and gently laid Sara down and hovered over her.

She pulled back to look down at her love. Sara's eyes were a dark olive green, hooded, and hazy with lust, her lips were already beginning to become swollen, and she was bare and open and so very much Felicity's. Sara was like a goddess and Felicity worshipped her, every inch of her; from the crown of her golden-blonde head to her tiny little toes that curled when Felicity kissed her neck, between her breasts, and down her stomach, until all the words from all the languages in the world were wiped clean from their minds and the universe fell away into distant memory, leaving only the two of them once again wrapped up in this perfect, beautiful moment that knew no beginning and no end, only desire and pleasure and unrestrained, unassailable, endless love.

I'm going to end this here, just because I've really run out of inspiration for this story. But I'm going to start a new one to fix the horrible tragedy that was Sara's death. However, if any of you would like to continue this story yourselves, just drop me a line to let me know and go for it! I'd love to see where some of you would take it.

Hope you guys understand the revised ending and sorry for the abrupt end. Thanks for all your support and interest!

-HJ