Sanctuary Secrets Sacrifice

Full Circle

"When we have lost everything,

including hope, life becomes a disgrace,

and death a duty."

W. C. Fields

It was raining. Of course it was raining. The end needed to be marked with something dramatic, and there was nothing more dramatic than rain. So atop of Robins Incorporated stood a woman currently inhabited by an ancient entity, a bright smile on her face as she looks up, letting the rain hit her face. She didn't care, because she could see them. She could feel them through the cracked sky that hovered above the city. They were coming, her family was coming. She heard footsteps, and turned her gaze to the sight of Oliver Queen. The Green Arrow now completely stained in crimson, as the blood soaked on his hood seemed to stream to the ground beneath him in the rain. She smiled back to him and pointed to the sky.

"Look up, Liver, it's happening." she lifted her eyes back up to the parting of the sky that was expanding by the second. She looked back to the man, and the smile fell when she noticed the blade in his hand. She turned meeting his eyes and she didn't see any love. Not any more. "So I guess this is it."

"I guess it is." he replied.

But before the end, there was a beginning. Something that would lead to the end. And so the story goes, it all began with Katherine Queen. Katherine Queen was very much alive. The problem? No one knew it, not even her. If anyone asked her where she was, she'd say in hell. This place that was so tiny, and yet so vast. The end, and yet never ending. It made no sense at all. Nothing about this place that looked exactly like Star City, and yet was completely void of any human being beside one herself.

The first day she found herself trapped here, she ran, yelled, for anyone. Mostly she looked for him. For Oliver. The one who could appear in that moment and take away all of her fears. He never showed up, and that fear only grew, day after day of being trapped. Soon she couldn't keep track of time because in this place time was nonexistent. The stars and the moon hung above her head all the time. She was forced into this darkness both figuratively and literally and she had no idea how to escape. In the beginning she really did attempt to search every inch of this fake city for a way out and yet she couldn't find any thing. She had no way of telling how long she'd been trapped, but it was starting to feel like she'd been here for years, which couldn't be right. She couldn't be locked away in this place, away from her daughter, Ari...away from Oliver for years.

Each day it was getting harder and harder to keep trying, to keep hoping. That's what was happening. Little by little, hope slipped away, until one day she just stopped. She sat in the dark, colder version of her home and just didn't move. She laid curled on the couch, her eyes on the blank screen of a television that only turned on to show her the things she did not want to see. At the moment it was off. A few moments ago Katie was staring at the image of Ari staring back her as if she could see her. The look in Ari's eyes told Katie who she was looking at and it was definitely someone who was not supposed to be near her. Katie didn't know if the images were real, or more torture tactics, but every time she seemed to focus every bit of energy on that moment. Willing whatever power she had to keep the danger away from her loved ones. It was rare that the television flicked on. She could count the times on one hand. There was a time she could see Oliver, and he was in the bunker, and the way his eyes looked at her was a look of distrust. Ari happened to walk in that room, and that was the first time it happened. When Katie tried to focus on pulling the danger away from the girl. There was another time,the television flicked on showing a prison and Damien Darhk was there and he was about to stab Laurel with an arrow. This wasn't real, Katie knew this couldn't be real, and yet when she saw it, she screamed for him to stop and then the television just flicked off. And now this is where she spent her days. It was a torture she seemed to welcome because it was the only window to a life she was slowly starting to forget. She laid there with the single hope that one day it would be over. One day she'd just slip away and be free of this place.