Continuity: After Auld Acquaintance.

It was almost dawn when Jade saw the three figures walking towards the building. Green Arrow, Black Canary, and him. From the dismally broken look on Roy's face and from the way the other two were trying to console him, she figured that none of them were infected with Starro-tech. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Having reached the building, Roy appeared to be attempting to make Green Arrow and Black Canary go away. Would he send her away, too? Eventually, the other two heroes conceded and Roy entered the building alone. Jade saw Black Canary bury her face in Green Arrow's chest. Both looked miserable. Just exactly how bad was the situation?

The door opened slowly, and Jade held her breath. She hid in the darkness, unsure of what to do. She hadn't seen her Roy in three weeks, since she had stabbed herself in the heart. She still didn't want to face him over that fact. How would he react?

Roy came in and shut the door. He leaned against it for a moment before sinking to the floor. He threw aside his weapons and ripped his mask off his face, which he buried in his hands. He looked wretched.

"Jade," he murmured to himself. "Jade, where are you?"

He remembered her. She nearly collapsed from the relief, but managed to rush to his side, wrapping her arms around the surprised archer. "I'm here, Roy, I'm here."

Roy returned her embrace. "Jade! I didn't think you'd be here. You scared the hell out of me. Nearly stopped my heart-" He suddenly and violently pushed her away. "Nearly stopped your heart!"

"Roy, I can explain," she began, but Roy wasn't hearing any of it. Fury distorted his features.

"What were you thinking, you idiot? After all that you told me about how I should never use sleeping pills because you were afraid I'd die- and then you just go ahead and stab yourself! Filthy hypocrite. If you hadn't survived... Jade, if you hadn't survived..." Unable to speak anymore, he gathered her back into his arms and held her there.

Some time later, he had calmed down enough to speak again. He told her how his mind had come back:

"It happened gradually and not in sequence. My memory came back in fragments and it was extremely confusing, like watching clips from a movie that were all out of order. The first thing I remembered was being programmed to be a mole, and then becoming obsessed with 'finding' the mole on the team. Then I remembered making pancakes for Cheshire, and thought I was going insane, until I remembered that it's been quite a while since I stopped thinking of you as Cheshire, and just as Jade.

It was really difficult trying to distinguish between the 'other' me and 'this' me. I still haven't sorted it all out yet. And then I remembered... you stabbing yourself. I remember the horror I felt, and then when you lost your consciousness, the 'other' me came back, but I think the shock was so great that for a while, parts of 'this' me lingered, and the 'other' me thought it was strange why he felt so much concern for you- after all, to him, you were just Cheshire, the enemy. And by the way, if you ever, ever try to kill yourself again, I'll... I'll..."

"I won't, Roy. I won't."

"Promise?"

"I don't make promises. But I still won't. I'm a free agent now, truly 'my own girl.' So I have no reason to attempt that again."

"Good. Don't even think about attempting that again."

"Let's stop talking about me and talk a bit more about you. Are you really going to be okay?"

"I don't know, Jade. I really don't. Since fulfilling my objective, I feel incredibly lost. The only purpose I've ever known was to execute my programming, and now that it's done, it feels as though there's this great gaping hole in my mind.

I knew I was a clone before, but it wasn't so bad then because underneath everything, that programming was continuously giving me a motive to be League-worthy, so I still felt worthy even after realizing what I was. But with it gone, I feel like a complete nobody. I'm a copy. A cheap knock-off. Everything I've lived for, everything I believed about myself, were all lies.

Nothing is real to me anymore. Green Arrow never took me as his protege; he chose Roy Harper, and I'm not Roy Harper. My friends were only friends with me because they thought I was him. My dream to join the Justice League was just that- a dream, caused by mind control. Nothing is real.

There is one exception, though. It's you." He looked at her intensely, his eyes burning blue. "You knew what I was from the very beginning. But you don't care, do you?"

Jade shook her head. "No. I don't care who you are or what you are so long as you're you. That's all that matters to me. Em yeu anh, Roy... I love you."

Roy cried. He was desperately trying to pretend like it wasn't happening, and was looking at everything but her, but Jade saw the silent tears and she cried, too. Jade had always considered crying a weakness; she had believed that strong people never cried. But now she understood what crying really was: it was a part of the healing process, to become stronger. To become unbroken, you had to break down first.

So she held the broken boy as tightly as she could, as if she could prevent him from falling to pieces. It was obvious that they had a long and difficult journey ahead of them.

Roy needed to come to terms with what he was and who he was. He had to find the original Roy Harper, either dead or alive, so he could begin his own life. He needed to understand that the real purpose of life was to live, not just to establish an objective and meet it.

She needed to accept that she would no longer be fighting the way she used to, not with her badly damaged heart. She had to abandon her mercenary mindset, the only mindset she had ever known. She also needed to let go of the illusion that if her own father wouldn't love her, no one else would either. Roy had made her realize that she could be loved, too. After seeing how he had come to care for her, even though he was a hero and she was a villain, she realized that Artemis and their mother loved her not because of family obligation, but because they just did. Because she was Jade.

She had once joked that she imagined that hope had red hair and blue eyes. Well, her hope did.

A broken arrow. A broken smile. Two wrongs didn't make a right. But maybe, she hoped, just maybe two broken people could unbreak each other.

The End.