Chapter Text
Ta-er al-Sahfer knelt before The Demon’s Head, her knees hard against the flagstones. Her wrists were tied ruthlessly behind her back. The rope bit into her skin, she’d already rubbed her wrists raw and bloody. There was no loosening the knot. No slipping the leash. An assassin stood behind her, his bow drawn. The point of an arrow was nocked at her spine, she could feel it digging painfully into her back. The bowstring was taught. Sara might know how to escape ropes and capture, but these were the masters who had taught her. They weren’t leaving anything to chance when dealing with one of their own. Sara had been taught too well. She was one of their best. And yet here she was, in chains before the holy pit and its master; Ra’s Al Ghul.
“You replace evil with death - ” said Sara, staring resolute and unflinching into Ra’s Al Ghul’s eyes. “Do you think I hold that much power here? Do I hold such influence in these halls that you would fear Death’s humble servant? Do I scare you that much, that you’d name me evil too?” Sara strained evermore against her ropes, ignoring the burning skin shredding at her wrists. Looking for a loop hole, a way out. Trying to buy some time.
“I serve Death, Master.” Said Sara stubbornly. “I serve the League. I hold no such dishonor in my heart. I would not betray the League.”
Ra’s Al Ghul stood over her, his sword steady upon her throat. The Demon’s Head. The man who could not die. He who had died again and again, but the grave would not keep him. Sara could feel his piercing gaze upon her. Watching her with the same cold and calculating eyes that had seen kingdoms rise and fall and centuries pass him by. Only he was allowed the gift of life here, where all others bowed to death – he commanded it. One move from him and she’d bleed out at his feet as so many had before her.
The Pit had granted a fire within him so unrepentant that death couldn’t find its way into his bones. Not to age him beyond a day, or break his back before years of toil. The Pit had resurrected him countless times, until he was only bones and fury. The Pit had given him life, and a lust for blood centuries had not dulled. The point of his sword was sharp and thirsty. He had never stayed his hand. Not for love or mercy.
Not for his daughter.
“Will you replace me with death?” Asked Sara Lance, swallowing against the cold steel under her chin. “For daring to love your daughter?”
Ra’s Al Ghul tilted Sara’s chin up with his blade. Nicking the soft skin there. Sara felt a spike of pain as a bead of hot blood welled up and dripped down her throat.
“You should be honored, child.” Said the Demon’s Head. “To meet your end by my hand.” His voice was as slow as ever, with no pretense of mockery. Sara’s dawning death didn’t even stir his voice beyond that monotonous murmur. “Many would offer themselves up willingly to meet the purity of my blade.”
“I have served your daughter willingly. I have kneeled before her.” Sara couldn’t stop fury in her voice, a disrespect that alone would damn her. If she was to die here with her hands bound, she would go down fighting. One way or another. “I have served Death with honour. I have served the league with honour. I have served Nyssa with honour.”
“My daughter has knelt before you.” Shouted Ra’s Al Ghul, his voice cracked like a whip around the stone hall. At last Sara had broken through his steady and calm façade. At last he raised his voice. Fire flashed in his eyes and reflected the stormy waters of the Pit in his gaze. The fury of its waters. The eternal bloodlust it spewed forth into all who sunk beneath its waters.
“She let you into her most private chambers! Allowed you to speak such… disobedience, in her presence! You have defiled this place, you have disrupted the order of the League. Nyssa is my heir, and it is her duty to continue my bloodline.” He dug the sword in a fraction more, opening the cut deeper under her jaw. “You make her neglect her duty. Forget her place.”
“She knows her place.” Said Sara slowly, careful for every word to reach Nyssa. She did not look at the Demon’s Head as she said it. She looked beyond. To where Nyssa was held in place by her father’s guards. Just out of reach. They did not dare bind the heir to the demon, but it took several of them to hold her back. Nyssa strained against their grip with everything she had. Sara could see the tendons in her neck straining. The white knuckled grip of her fingers.
“She knows who she is.” She said softly, just for her.
The moment hung in the air between them. Their eyes locked from across the room. They were so far apart. Separated by the Pit itself. Up on the dais Nyssa could see everything. Every twitch of her father’s hand. Every signal he sent his loyal body of followers. Every breath that rose and fell in Sara’s chest. Every emotion on Sara’s face.
“No. She does not remember her place.” Said Ra’s Al Ghul. “But she will.”
His face was hard and cold. All that fury back to simmering under the surface. In a fluid motion he drew his sword away from Sara’s throat. A tiny flicker of blood drops followed the blade. Sara watched as they splashed minutely on the dusty stone floor. Everything suddenly seemed to be happening so very slowly…
Her blood landed on the floor, marking it wet and shining in the firelight. A precursor to what was to come. They were the first. They would not be the last. They were the last toll. The last ring of the bell. The last warning.
Everything was drawing to a close.
Ra’s Al Ghul knelt close to her, drawing her in as though the conversation was too intimate not to whisper. Like it was a private moment between them both. He gripped her shoulder with his hand. In another life, Sara’s father had done the same when he was proud of her. But this was not the gentle grip of a proud Captain Lance… this was the death grip of a foe.
Sara felt him enter her space with all her senses rebelling and screaming. His eyes glittered black. His words fell from his mouth as though time had slowed upon the earth. Sara could feel his breath, see it curling in the cold. She could taste the smoke from the torches in the air and feel the rope give ever so slightly between her wrists. Her blood running down her wrists. Dripping from her fingers.
He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his sword. “It is time you learned your place too.”
He didn’t look away once. Didn’t move his ironclad grip from her shoulder. He looked into her eyes, closer and closer still… and Sara saw centuries of hatred in his eyes.
Nyssa screamed. Her voice ripping from her throat with unmatched fury. “NO!” Nyssa’s voice broke and she twisted violently, “Stop!”
With a wave of anguish and the promise of grief to come, Nyssa snapped her first captor’s wrist. In another hairsbreadth she had thrown the next over her shoulder. By a third heartbeat, a knife was squarely in the last guard’s eye. Their bodies fell backwards, ever so slowly.
Nyssa threw herself forward. Ever so slowly.
Sara saw Ra’s al Ghul smile. His teeth glinted with firelight and malice. Sara lurched forward, one last attempt to get away. To reach Nyssa in time. She heard the drawstring creak back. She heard the scrape of steel as the Demon’s Head’s blade rushed out of its scabbard.
Sara had a word upon her lips. A snarl upon her face. A promise to keep. Nyssa was a hairsbreadth behind, about to reach them. About to stop this.
Sara only had the time to whisper, “- Beloved.” - Before the Demon’s Head had shoved his blade through Sara’s chest.
Nyssa was a foot behind her father. Always behind. Always too late.
All the breath left Sara’s body in a jolt of agony. She felt the sword pierce her with an awful sickening squelch. Her ribs crunched and splintered, cleaving before the Demon’s blade. Her muscles split in its path. Her lungs sliced open at its mercy and blood rushed up her throat. With a slick, wet scream the blade broke from the small of her back and glanced off her spine. A strangled hoarse scream broke from Sara’s throat. Blood spewed from her mouth. Coated her teeth.
A spray of blood drops splattered across the flagstones in an arch of glistening, ruby red. Sara would have stumbled, would have fallen flat on her face; if Ra’s Al Ghul hadn’t been holding her up.
“Your death has always belonged to me, little Canary.” Said Ra’s Al Ghul. He kept her upright, his eyes alight with bloodlust. His grip on her shoulder was a painful claw, his nails broke her skin in his cold rage.
Sara could only stutter for a breath that wasn’t coming, looking down with wide eyes at the hilt of the sword buried in her chest. The silver cross guard lined up with her collarbones perfectly. It was so ornate. So beautiful. It had probably killed hundreds of people by now. Sara stared at it numbly. The last panic flooded her blood, fear as deep as fear could go, waking from her bones.
Ra’s Al Ghul didn’t wait long. He only let out a deep, satisfied sigh. That grin, that haunting grin on his face was going to be the last thing Sara saw. With a bone rattling sound, a scrape of steel on bones, her ribs crunching and a wet slick, he pulled out his blade.
He let go of her then.
With her hands bound behind her back, Sara crunched to the floor. She gasped for breath, drowning in her own blood. Her heart a thousand drums in her chest. Fear like electricity shooting through her brain. Her being. Her soul.
“Protect me from your punishment - ,” Said the Demon’s Head coldly. He placed his hand flat upon the ground, almost gently in a pool of Sara’s blood. His palm was stark red, bright and hot with life as he raised it up to her face. He wiped his fingers across her eyes slowly. Then her lips. Anointing her with her own blood. “ - on the day your servants are resurrected.”
The last rites of the League. Sara blinked blood out of her eyes, and tasted blood upon her lips. Death was blind. Death was silent. Death had come for Sara Lance at last.
She writhed in pain, still desperate to get up. To move. To get to Nyssa. To say goodbye at least. She lurched onto one knee her skin scraping against the floor. Everything was too cold around her. Too final. She could taste too much blood. See too much blood pooling on the floor beneath her.
Ra’s Al Ghul stepped aside and did not look back. He went to wash his hands in the screaming waters of the Pit. Adding Sara’s blood to all those he had killed before. All the spilled blood the Pit had tasted over hundreds of years.
Sara stumbled to her feet, swaying and dizzy and hardly able to breathe. But there Nyssa was at last. No longer held at bay. No longer prevented by the Demon’s Head himself, from holding her beloved in her arms. Nyssa grabbed her. Caught her. Held her up. Saved her from the fall. Nyssa held Sara close for a few long, terrible seconds. An awful howl of despair caught in her throat and fell with the stinging tears from her eyes. She knelt to the ground, gently, gently, cradling the little lost Canary.
All those years ago Nyssa had saved her from the North China Sea and ruin at Lian Yu. Sara had been marked for death there. Damned to the deep. Her bones belonged to that island. To Purgatory. To die alone, surrounded by forest and cliff, sea and sky. No grave. No funeral. No hope.
Nyssa had dragged her from the suffocating debt of the sea, and remade her life with fire, sword and stone. The daughter of the demon had taken the duty of holding Sara Lance’s life in her hands and brought her back to the league.
Sara owed Death’s daughter every breathe in her body…and her final words would always belong to her.
“I have –”spluttered Sara, her chest heaving as it split apart. Her throat bubbled and choked with blood. “L – Loved – Y- You.” She coughed, and it rushed from her mouth in a boiling hot river. Dribbling onto Nyssa’s shoulder. Staining her skin with the blood from her lover’s heart.
Sara’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, but she found Nyssa’s eyes and did not look away. Held together in each other’s embrace. Sara’s grip weakening with every moment. Nyssa clutched harder and harder as Sara’s life slipped through her fingers… as though she hoped to catch it in her hands. Hold it. Keep it safe again. Protect her from the grave.
Sara had drowned before. It was that death that chased her in her dreams and fought to claim her while she woke. The gambit had filled her lungs with seawater, the Amazo too. She knew that salty death upon her tongue and stinging her eyes, she knew she could not escape it forever. That there would not always be a shore to crawl upon, or a friend drag her from the waves… She had always known somehow. That she would die there. Drowning. Her lungs filled with choppy salty water.
She recognized it now, as it came to her; that old familiar foe. She recognized the salt on her tongue, the choking copper coating her throat and filling her lungs. Her death had been promised to the North China Sea. She’d been born to drown. To gasp for air and find nothing but fluid and fear. It gushed from within her this time, the North China Sea had waited in her bones for years.
All debts must be paid. One way or another.
Nyssa held her as she died. Every single second of the tragic and awful moment. Nyssa touched her face, smoothing her cheek frantically. “I know, beloved. I have loved you.” She whispered. “With everything I am.” She pressed their foreheads together, salty tears falling upon her cheeks. “My place will always be next to you.” Her voice was hoarse and broken. “It was an honour. Being – being yours.”
Her death was overdue. Sara knew that. But it didn’t stop how much it hurt. Her heart was a broken thing inside her chest, slowly giving up. Slowing down.
“I will - ,” choked Sara, her fingers numbly clumsily wrapping around Nyssa’s wrist, desperate for her to know. “– always be yours.”
“End this.” Said the Demon’s Head from the Pit. His hands were dripping clean with the waters of Lazarus. There was nothing human in him then. Nothing kind or merciful. There was the Pit and its many whispering voices filling his ears. Demanding death. Demanding blood. Demanding the sacrifice of lost girls and downed starling canaries.
He stared coldly at his heir cradling her only lover. They were both so covered in blood, it would have been hard to tell who’d been stabbed. All it took was one nod…
Three arrows fired into Sara’s back.
And Sara Lance was no more.