A/N: This was written for the DCCW Rare Pair Swap, hosted on tumblr/AO3. The prompt was "Oliver/Sara fake dating turns real fic. Oliver's spotted by tabloids with White Canary. To prevent speculation that he's the Arrow, they say they're dating."

The alert had gone off twenty minutes ago, but Sara and Oliver had already finished stopping the robbery and depositing the perpetrators at the police station. The thieves had thought themselves far better prepared than they actually were, and quick work had been made of them.

Oliver had bought them two coffees for the walk back to the lair, and he offered one to her now. She took it with a smile.

"Couldn't get decent coffee on the Waverider," she said, sipping it. "Jax tried to fix it a dozen times, but it never took. It made very good tea, though. Rip was very smug."

Oliver smirked at her. "What, you couldn't stop off at some future coffee shops?" He was still in his civilian clothing, unlike Sara. They had attracted some stares: Mayor Oliver Queen in a leather jacket and jeans walking side by side with the White Canary, still resting her staff over her shoulder.

"Future food could be weird." Sara wrinkled her nose at the thought. Oliver snorted at her expression.

He nudged her arm. "It's good to have you home, Sara."

Felicity dropped a stack of magazines in front of her. It landed heavily and the top magazines slid off the pile across the table. Some were open, folded so that they would stay open to the page Felicity desired, and in others, the relevant story was headline news. All were about much the same theme: how did Oliver know the White Canary?

Sara frowned. "Isn't me being the White Canary the biggest open secret in all of history?" she asked.

"You would know," muttered Dig, who still looked mildly shell-shocked whenever he thought about Sara's time-travelling adventures.

"I think the tabloids just enjoy trotting out the 'Oliver is the Green Arrow' story occasionally," said Felicity. "Still."

"Haven't I been cleared of this multiple times?" wondered Oliver. He and Thea were sparring on the other side of the room. "Roy is still on the run over this." Thea took advantage of his distraction to land a solid hit to his stomach. He groaned, and Thea danced away, laughing.

Felicity shrugged. "Tabloids are tabloids. It should go away soon enough." She sat down in her chair, and spun to face her computer. Sara went to restack the magazines when Felicity slowly turned back around. "Unless we're very unlucky, which tends to be a thing here."

Felicity, naturally, was right.

Oliver and the White Canary were spotted together two weeks later, and then Mayor Queen was most definitely saved by White Canary, and under no circumstances rescued himself. After each incident, the magazines started up again. Worse still, genuine news organisations – although admittedly, not particularly respectable ones – had started to pick up on the chatter.

"We should probably do something to head off the speculation," noted Felicity. She was staring at her screens, which were filled with multiple stories about Oliver's possible double life. Some of them were surprisingly accurate, while some insisted that Oliver was not actually the Green Arrow, but was merely hinting at it to get his poll numbers up. (Sara wished she could say that there hadn't been Star City mayors who wouldn't do exactly that.)

"You two should pretend to date," said Thea, perched on the hand rails.

Oliver stared at her second for a moment, then looked back to the rest of the group. "Serious suggestions, anyone?"

"No, seriously!" said Thea, sliding off the rails. "Sara's right. Her double life is the biggest open secret in the world. She doesn't even wear a mask. So if you two are dating, it makes sense that you're hanging out, even in costume, and obviously Sara would want to rescue her boyfriend."

"My damsel in distress," corrected Sara. Oliver narrowed his eyes at her, and she smirked in response.

Felicity tapped her finger against her chin thoughtfully. "It could work."

"Do actual people ever fake date?" asked Oliver.

"I don't think we count as 'actual people' anymore, Ollie," pointed out Sara. He huffed.

"Couldn't the plan to beat Slade count as fake dating?" asked Diggle, earning himself a look of betrayal from Oliver. "Sorry, man, but I'm with Thea on this one."

Oliver sighed. Team Arrow was, as much as Oliver sometimes hated to admit it, a democracy. "Alright, fake relationship it is." Sara opened her mouth, and Oliver pointed at her without looking. "Don't say it."

Sara exchanged an amused glance with Thea, and sang out, "Damsel in distress!"

"Think they've taken the bait yet?" asked Sara, taking Oliver's hand so that their joined hands were very visible to the paparazzi peering through the window. The restaurant was a common haunt for the paparazzi following Star City's idle rich, and thus an obvious place to start Operation Damsel.

Oliver looked amused. "Oh, my sweet summer child. You really know nothing about the paparazzi, do you?"

"Hey, you've well and truly caught up with the pop culture references now," said Sara, popping an olive into her mouth. "I can tell you how the show ends."

"I think Thea would try to murder you if you spoiled it for her," Oliver said, entirely serious. "She's probably even capable of succeeding now."

Sara snorted. "Maybe this plan is her pre-emptively taking revenge."

"You seemed pretty cool with it in the Lair," noted Oliver.

"Oh, yeah," said Sara, waving her hand dismissively. "I fake-dated on heaps of missions on the Waverider. We've all fake-dated at some point. I just never had to deal with the paparazzi before." Oliver was staring at her. She gave him a jaunty smile and added, "Have I told you that I'm the real Lancelot?"

"Remember when the craziest thing we had to deal with was a super-solider serum that drove people insane?" asked Oliver. "I miss those days. Those days were simple."

"I sometimes get the impression that Dig is one crazy thing away from a breakdown," admitted Sara.

"Zombies will do it," agreed Oliver solemnly. Sara opened her mouth, and his eyes went wide. "No." Sara started laughing, but was promptly distracted by a flash of light from the window.

"They never stop," she grumbled, slumping back into her seat.

"I'm pretty sure that's the point," noted Oliver. She made a face at him and he smiled. "I'm pretty sure they've got enough now, if you want." Sara nodded gratefully, and he called for the cheque.

Sara wrapped an arm around his waist and buried into his side as he went to open the door. He stopped and looked down at her, bemused. "What are you doing?"

"Fake dating," she said. "I'm the expert here, remember?" He sighed and put an arm around her shoulder, hitching her closer still. She could feel the warmth of his body through her jacket, and couldn't help but remember when she'd been doing this for real.

"Well, Thea's idea worked," said Felicity. Thea mimed blowing at her knuckles, smirking at Oliver. "The tabloids are now talking about the Sara-Oliver-Laurel love triangle now. Some got a photo of me at work and are using it as proof I'm also heartbroken. Love square?"

"Love square works," agreed Sara.

"And, as if we ever needed proof, we now know that the tabloids are vapid," grumbled Oliver.

"Sara was right," noted Diggle, who was reading through one of the articles with a vaguely incredulous expression on his face. "They really playing you as Sara's damsel in distress, Oliver."

Sara shrugged. "It's romantic."

"At least people might be more reluctant to kidnap the mayor now that he's dating one of the vigilantes," said Felicity, optimistically.

Felicity, unfortunately, was wrong. That's how it tended to work with Felicity: when she made pessimistic predictions, she was almost always right, and when she was being optimistic, things never failed to spin out of control.

If anything, they became more likely to kidnap Oliver. Approximately half of them tried to take him while he was alone, and promptly had their asses kicked. The other half came for him in public, using the people around him as leverage, and Oliver very reluctantly allowed himself to be kidnapped.

Today, they had tracked him down to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city (because of course it was an abandoned warehouse. Felicity had begun to seriously consider monitoring them permanently). Most of the team was sitting tonight out: after all, it wouldn't do for every vigilante but the Green Arrow to turn up to rescue the mayor.

Sara swiftly took out two guards and knocked a third to the ground. "Tell me where Oliver is," she snarled at him, pressing her boot against his chest.

"Bitch," he spat in response. Sara set her jaw.

"Fine," she said, and smacked her staff against the side of his head. His head fell to the side, eyes fluttering shut. "I guess I'll find him myself."

She found him not long later, surrounded by six guards. Which, honestly? Kind of overkill for a supposedly harmless politician. They were looking around nervously, obviously aware of what was happening to their colleagues.

"Sorry I'm late, honey," she called out, stepping around the corner so that they could see her. The guards rushed into formation. Behind them, Oliver waved, having apparently already escaped his bindings. She bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"Do you really think you can defeat all of us?" asked one of the guards, sceptically. Duh, she thought. She totally could.

But instead, she smiled blandly at them. "Hm, maybe if I had some back up. Green Arrow, perhaps?"

The guards shifted uncomfortably, evidently aware that they were missing something. "And where is he?" asked one, trying to appear unaffected and in control of the situation.

"Here," said Oliver, and attacked.

Sara has always thought that Felicity would make a terrifying supervillain if she ever so desired. Fortunately, her talents were reserved for the good guys, and occasionally screwing with the tabloids. Or, in this case, both.

The tabloids had gotten bored with the love square stories, and while most had stopped reporting on them beside the odd photo, a couple had reverted back to 'Oliver is the Green Arrow' stories. Felicity had stared at them critically for a moment, then announced, "I got this."

The next day, there were photos in all the magazines of Oliver and Felicity out at dinner. Star Women Weekly wondered if Oliver had gone back to his old ways. The Starling Whisperer thought that Sara deserved it, since that was how she and Oliver had gotten together in the first place.

"The tabloids still haven't realised that men and women can platonically eat a meal together," said Felicity, with a great deal of satisfaction, looking down at the computer screen.

Sara looked sideways at Oliver. "Do we have to pretend to fight now?"

"I thought you were the expert," he replied.

"Maybe stop being seen in public together for a while?" suggested Thea. "And when you are, definitely stop holding hands." She glanced down meaningfully, and Sara realised they were holding hands at the moment. It had become a habit when she was with Oliver in public. She supposed they had just forgotten when entering the Lair. Sara dropped his hand hurriedly.

"I really don't want to know how you're so good at fake dating," grumbled Oliver.

Thea shrugged delicately. "I watch a lot of TV."

And so, Sara and Oliver started avoiding each other in public. Felicity, too, had become off-limits. They still saw each other most nights, suited up, but –

Well, Sara kind of missed Oliver's company. It wasn't like she was lonely during her days: she still was able to hang out with her father, Dig, Thea and the rest of Team Arrow. But she had been spending most of her time with Oliver, in part because of the fake relationship.

She hadn't actually needed to change her behaviour a great deal because of it. It was a considerably longer con than any of the fake relationships she had participated in on the Waverider, and she and Oliver had decided to behave normally, but with added hand holding and kisses on the cheek. As a result, it didn't feel like she was free of pretending, but like she'd lost her friend, instead.

Oliver was one of Sara's best friends in the entire world. They understood each other. They shared their story: two stupid, sheltered kids thrown into hell and forged into weapons, before eventually clawing their way into heroism. Much of their story had happened apart from each other, but it was still theirs.

Sara gritted her teeth, trying to shake the thoughts away. Stupid tabloids.

One of the first things the League taught you was that anyone could get a lucky shot. It was why they trained you to be able to work through pain, to keep fighting even when injured.

Oliver had learnt that lesson, too – through experience more than from his time with the League. No one had even noticed he'd been stabbed in the shoulder until all of the bank robbers had been successfully taken down. He needed immediate medical attention, and his office was so much closer than their base. It made the most sense for her to take him there while the others mopped up, but the minimal protection they had from discovery was making her twitchy.

She could hear voices and gritted her teeth. Oliver's office was silent beyond Oliver's heavy breathing. There was no reason to worry about anyone entering. They weren't making enough noise for someone to check.

Naturally, right outside the door, a woman said, "I'll just drop these on the Mayor's desk and be right out." Because clearly, simplicity was too difficult for the universe to manage. She looked at Oliver critically: the wound on his shoulder and the pants would make his vigilante activities all too obvious to anyone who saw him. She had to act now.

Sara kicked the hood and bow under the desk and went to swung a leg over Oliver's lap to straddle him. Oliver's expression was questioning, but there was no time to explain. As the door handle began to turn behind them, she leant down and kissed him, hard.

For a second, Oliver didn't react. She tried to keep herself from making a frustrated noise: this was the only way to keep anyone from looking too closely at them, and she had positioned herself in such a way that his wound wouldn't be visible from the doorway.

Then Oliver made a small noise in the back of his throat and his lips opened under hers, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. One hand rested on her waist, while the other entangled itself in her hair. He kissed the same way he always had, tasted the same as Sara remembered. Sara pressed herself closer to him, shifting in his lap slightly. Oliver made a strangled noise, and she smirked against his lips. She'd always known what Oliver liked. Behind them, somebody exclaimed, "oh!", but Sara barely heard.

It was the door slamming shut that jolted Sara back to herself. She pulled back, mouth slightly open. Oliver was looking at her, open and vulnerable.

Fuck. She was still in love with Oliver Queen.

And judging by the way he was watching her, he was in love with her, too.

Sara swallowed and stood up, reaching for the bandages. Silently, she started winding one around his shoulder, touching him only when necessary.

How hadn't she noticed before? She needed to step back from Team Arrow. She didn't know for certain how the timeline was supposed to go, but she knew for certain that it wasn't like this.

Oliver caught her hand. "Sara," he said softly, pleading.

"I can't, Ollie." Her voice sounded choked. She gently removed her hand from his. His hand fell back to his side, and she finished wrapping the bandages.

Here's the thing: Sara has never believed in The One. She's never believed that there's one person out there in the world that's perfect for you, who you'll find no matter how your life went or who you were. What if your One died? Were you meant to never love again?

No, Sara believed that there were dozens of people out there who could be right for her. Who one ended up with depended on choices and sometimes circumstances more than fate or destiny did.

She might have been happy with Nyssa, if the world had been a little different, and the League not such an integral part of who Nyssa was. Sara had loved Nyssa, and Nyssa had loved Sara in return, but if anything was proof that love could not always overcome, it was their relationship.

She might have been happy with Leonard, even, if they had been able to have more time. There had been the beginnings of something there, but they had never had the chance to explore it.

Sara had left behind a trail of 'if only's: if only it had been a different time, if only they'd had more time, if only their situation was just a bit different. If Rip hadn't recruited her – if she had died with Laurel, like the timeline had once prescribed – then 'if only's would have been all she'd ever had.

Someday, Sara was certain, Oliver would be another great 'if' of her life. Maybe Sara would have been happy with Oliver, if only she hadn't been meant to die and let him live a long and happy life with somebody else.

"Well, you're back in the tabloids," said Felicity, pushing back from her desk so that they could all see her screens. "But it's all back to the love triangle saga, rather than Green Arrow speculation, so I guess Sara's plan worked. Good job, Sara." Felicity applauded briefly, but each clap got more half-hearted as she looked between Sara and Oliver, clearly analysing how far apart they were standing.

"Someone in my office is going to be fired," groused Oliver.

"Is everything – okay?" asked Felicity. "It's just, you two have barely looked at each other since you came in this morning, and you guys are usually together all the time -"

"Not all the time," protested Sara. Felicity looked thoroughly unconvinced. Sara pushed her lips together, then said, "Look, I'm going to meet my dad. I'll see you all later."

She was in the elevator before she heard Oliver say, "Sara, wait." She looked up and he was walking towards her. The 'close' button was tempting, but instead she sighed and held the lift for him. Several members of Team Arrow were watching them varying levels of subtlety, and Sara let out a sigh of relief when the doors slid shut, leaving her and Oliver alone.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said, looking steadfastly at the doors. "I don't want anything to -"

"I kissed you, Oliver," she pointed out, wearily. "You're not the one who needs to apologise."

Oliver looked at her, finally. "Just don't shut me out, okay? I don't want this to change."

"I was supposed to die with Laurel," she said, voice flat. "I was supposed to die, and you lived out your life, and I wasn't meant to be part of it."

Oliver sucked in a breath. "But you're okay now, right? You're safe?"

"I don't know." Sara looked down. "No one ever does. But the point is that you have a whole life to live that I wasn't meant to be a part of. I can't just go against everything I worked for on the Waverider because I -" Because I want you. She couldn't say it. Sara wouldn't give him false hope.

But Oliver knew. She could see it in his eyes. He put a hand on her cheek and she leaned into it instinctively. His hands weren't soft – they hadn't been in years – but his touch was gentle and familiar. Her Ollie.

"I don't – I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost you both then," he said.

She took his free hand. "You'll never have to find out."

Oliver's gaze was intense. He was going to do something, Sara thought – say something, kiss her, she didn't know. She wasn't sure she would pull away if he did kiss her.

The elevator dinged open, and the moment was lost.

It was hard, going from having the entirety of time to call your backyard to a linear, normal(ish) life. Some people would suggest the best way to go about it was to quit cold turkey. Sara was not those people.

The Waverider was floating above eighteenth century London, probably only a few years before the Industrial Revolution kicked off. The city was glowing against the encroaching darkness, hundreds of candles and lamps working to fend off the night. Sara sighed, legs dangling over the open cargo-hold. This was why she could never fully quit.

Someone nudged her shoulder and a beer appeared in front of her face. She accepted the beer and clinked it against Jax's own.

"How's Star City?" he asked, settling down beside her.

"I may have become a tabloid celebrity," she admitted, and Jax choked on the sip of beer he'd just taken. Sara smirked; she may have timed her words for optimal effect.

"Rip!" shouted Jax. "Sara's screwing with the timeline again!" Sara snorted and elbowed Jax.

"You're captain now. You don't get to run to Rip with my problems," she said, but Rip had already appeared in the doorway. Rip wasn't a constant member of the team anymore, like Sara: he oversaw many different teams, all dedicated to finding and repairing aberrations. It had certainly made the legends lives less stressful, and Sara had it on good authority that the other teams were much better at following orders than the legends themselves. Sara was relatively confident that Rip would have a head full of grey hair by now if they weren't.

"You were captain, too, so I'm handing you off to a higher authority," said Jax, but his grin was mischievous, so what he really meant was You always do what you want, and now it's on Rip instead of me. Which – fair enough. Sara couldn't say that she'd never pulled the same trick.

"What is it now?" said Rip, in the long-suffering voice that no one but Rip could quite pull off.

Sara paused. She had, actually, been hoping to talk to Rip when she came aboard, even though there was no way of knowing for certain if she'd see him until she did. Rip was the most likely to have known of any abberations she had caused, and the most likely to take action over them. Sara knew that she had been pulled out of her timeline and that her second, permanent death had been averted in doing so. And she really didn't want to know if she was having a negative impact on the timeline by going home, but she had been captain of the Waverider, had given up the chance to save her sister to preserve reality, and had fought to prevent aberrations throughout the timeline. Sara had to know.

"What I'm doing," she said, slowly. "What I want to do – what has it done to the timeline?" Do I need to stop? Do I need to step back and let them all live their lives without me?

Rip looked saddened and horrified and compassionate in quick succession. "Sara, you don't need to -" He stopped, running a hand through his hair. "When I returned you to May instead of January, I accepted any changes to the timeline that might create. If you change the timeline, Sara, I'll wear it."

Sara swallowed. "No matter what I change?"

"I started this team trying to change the entire timeline in killing Vandal Savage," said Rip. "I think it's only fair to give you a bit of leeway to be with at least part of your family."

The elevator doors opened and Sara stuffed her hands into her pockets, taking a deep breath. Like she'd thought, Oliver was the only person here. He was shooting arrows at a target and didn't react to her arrival, although she knew that he must have noticed.

"Rough day?" she asked, walking slowly up the stairs to stand by Felicity's computers. Oliver lowered his bow and turned to face her.

"Being the mayor can be – stressful," said Oliver. His shoulders were slumped a little. That was her Oliver; always wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. She smiled at him, softly. He blinked and straightened. "How was your trip?"

Sara stepped down the stairs, towards him. "Good. I found some clarity on a couple of things."

He was still watching her. He had put his bow down and his gaze seemed impossibly soft. "Like what?"

They had stood across from each other like this, years ago, in a different hide out. They had both been hurting, then, in a way that they only fully trusted the other to see. They had still been clawing their way out of the darkness.

Now Oliver was looking at her, and she had no fear. He was a vigilante and the mayor and a superhero; she was an assassin and a legend and a superhero in her own right, too. They had changed so much since she had come home for the first time, but maybe not in this.

"I'm home," she said. Somehow, the words meant both the same and very different things as they had the first time she had said that to him. Oliver took in a sharp, deep breath, his expression questioning. She nodded.

Oliver closed the distance between them in a step, pulling her close. His hands were warm and large around her waist. Sara pushed herself upwards and kissed him.

Precisely no one on Team Arrow was surprised by this development.

Thea spent a lot of time looking vaguely smug. Neither Sara nor Oliver managed to work out if the fake relationship had been a real suggestion, or an elaborate plot on Thea's part to get them together. "It worked, right?" was all Thea would say on the matter.

"Maybe we'd be more surprised if you weren't holding hands all the time," said Felicity, not even bothering to look up from her computer. Diggle, lazing in a chair next to her, nodded in agreement. Sara might have protested the point if she and Oliver weren't already holding hands.

"For two people who regularly lie about half their lives, you're both very obvious," noted Dig.

"Are you both finished?" ground out Oliver. Felicity mimed zipping her lips, but Diggle looked unrepentant. Sara patted Oliver's arm comfortingly, slightly disconcerted when Thea smirked.

"Okay, we're going out on an actual date now," announced Sara, "so that we can hold hands in peace."

"Have fun with the paparazzi," said Felicity, too innocently for it not to be teasing. Sara made a face at her as she tugged Oliver towards the elevator. Oliver wrapped an arm around her and pressed his lips to her forehead, the doors sliding shut behind them.

"We could always ask to go on a date in another time," offered Oliver. "Or get Barry to run us to another city or something."

"And endure their teasing?" asked Sara, raising her eyebrows. "I'd take the paparazzi any day."

A grin was tugging at Oliver's lips. "Let them come, then."