Full Circle (Book 8 in Arrow/Spn Crossover)

Girding For War

We were curled up. She was behind me, her arm was laying over my chest and I was pretty sure if she'd been capable of it she'd be purring. So would I if I could. As much as I really wanted to lie there all day and ignore the world we had things to do. "How long has it been since you oiled and cleaned those guns?" Hunter pillow talk, so romantic.

"I've been bad about it," She confessed, "Been about a year and a half."

I was kind of curious why she hadn't told me about her stash, "Why didn't you tell me you had them?"

She moved away from me and I rolled over to look at her. She seemed oddly hesitant to answer at first, "Because of what I saw through our connection when you had the Mark," she kind of looked ashamed actually, "I, well to be honest, I was scared. When you first moved in, I wasn't sure if you somehow would try to act out those dreams in your sleep, be drawn to the weapons for some reason, so I decided the less you knew the better. After that you seemed so intent on quitting and having nothing to do with hunting I didn't see a reason to bring it up."

"Don't blame you. Sam went months without sleeping there near the end. I couldn't sleep and would spend hours in the gun range or stabbing at things. He never officially told me but he started sleeping with his door locked and at least one gun in his room." I gave her a quick kiss, "Was probably a good move on your part. Guess that means I've got a couple hours of weapons prep to do before we head out. May as well get to it. I want to give Baby a good once over too. Especially after going all crazy on her."

"Seems fair," she said as she stretched in the most tempting, seductive way possible. "You just gave me a good once over, guess it's her turn."

"I hate you so much right now," I was seriously considering changing my mind about saving the world, again.

She paused mid stretch and blew me a kiss, "Duty calls Babe."

"Yeah, yeah. Stupid monsters." I rolled out of bed and threw on my wrenching clothes.

"I can help with the weapons," she offered, "No need for you to do all of it."

"You should probably get a hold of all your clients, finish what you can and come up with a good cover story. This will probably take longer than a week and who knows where we'll be or what we'll be doing." The last time she'd gone on an extended sort of leave was when she'd been chasing down Leaping Deer, from what I understood she'd managed to stick pretty close to major areas that had decent wifi so she'd been able to work on the road. Monsters tend to like out of the way places, course who knew what they were doing this time around.

"Yeah, I guess I should." I think it started hitting her that she was going after monsters again and everything that could mean. Leaping Deer was the first thing she'd hunted in several years and that was less a hunt and more her protecting her people from a direct threat.

"You all right darlin'?"

The last of the humor she'd shown a few seconds before faded, "I think I need to call Cougar. Prepare him and come up with something to tell everyone else here. They understood when I left to chase down Leaping Deer, this is different and I won't lie to them."

I followed her train of thought and didn't like where it led, because it'd come down to her leaving to help me, help white people. That could be a problem. Most of the folks here had made peace with my existence in the middle of their tribe. I'd kept clear of tribal business and helped out when and where I could, but this would make a lot of them nervous. It would also give ammo to the faction that had never accepted me and by extension her. "This is going to get dicey isn't it?"

"Indeed," Shaman Running Coyote was starting to assert herself, I knew when to step back.

"You do what you have to, let me know what I can do. One thing though."