I.
The night that Felicity earns her first Team Arrow scar, Sara is conflicted. She feels guilty, and knows that she shouldn't – because she had been there to protect Felicity, yes, but it cannot be her fault if Felicity literally and forcefully shoves herself into danger protecting Sara, can it?
She thanks Felicity for her bravery as she inspects her new wound, and she means it sincerely, because despite that Sara could probably have ducked in time to miss Tockman's bullet with Felicity's cry of warning, it is strange, to her, that anyone would do such a thing. It was selfless and, in spite of her efforts to convey such to the IT mastermind, it was a braver action than Sara could say.
That someone would do such a thing for her is almost unthinkable, and Sara struggles to understand why, and even how.
Nyssa had protected Sara, and she had saved her, too – but it was not the same. Sara was a different girl then. She was only a girl, then, she amends thoughtfully. She was not then the woman who she is today, and even if Sara isn't always sure exactly who that woman is, she isn't sure that hers is a life worth saving, anymore – if it ever was to begin with.
Especially not at risk to the innocence of Felicity Smoak.
But even then, it is different. Nyssa molded Sara into a warrior when that was what she needed most, and Sara will always love Nyssa for that dedication. And, of course, for saving her. Now, Sara does not need to be a warrior, but she cannot make it stop. And what kind of warrior is she, anyway, if she cannot fight for the blonde computer hacker who makes her feel undamaged?
What kind of warrior is Sara if she cannot protect the only thing who has made her feel that way since the Gambit went down?
Still, if Felicity's day-to-day babbling is cute, it is nothing compared to drug-addled Felicity's babbling, complete with a slew of adorable expressions that take over her face, and despite her internal crisis, Sara is nothing but utterly charmed.
"I always wanted to say I took a bullet for someone," Felicity pouts thoughtfully, even if her eyes drift lazily to the ceiling as she leans backward on the hand set on the examination table behind her to keep her steady, "and now I can. So, really, I should be thanking you."
It's awkward, Sara realizes later, how long she regards Felicity Smoak in silence after that. She's still standing closely behind her, and if she thinks on it hard enough, she can feel the heat from Felicity's body an inch or two from her own stomach, but Sara isn't thinking on it hardly at all.
Instead, it is the look of utter sincerity and pride in Felicity's blindingly bright eyes that Sara thinks on, and the tiny smile that lilts the edges of her mouth upward.
When Sara realizes that she is still staring, she turns her gaze away and lets Oliver summarize their night and plans for the following ones. She keeps a close watch on Felicity, though, and when finally they are finished and Oliver instructs Diggle to bring her home, Sara plainly rejects.
"No," she insists. "I'll take her."
Oliver tips his head in minute confusion, but when he looks at Sara, she offers him nothing but a grin that feels as fake as the ones she offers Laurel, and a sheepish shrug.
"She saved my life," Sara explains with nonchalance that she doesn't feel at all, because her insides are quaking and her mind is reeling and it is all that she can do – all that she can do – to keep the quiver from her voice.
Sara had spent a long time being afraid, and so she knows what it feels like. But she does not understand why she feels it so strongly tonight, and all that she does know is that she needs to be sure that Felicity is okay.
She will have the comfort of that knowledge with or without Oliver's approval, Sara is determined, but it would still be simpler just to have it.
"Yeah," Oliver smiles fondly, turning to regard Felicity with pride and affection.
Sara shuffles on her feet for a moment, unsure about both the look he's giving Felicity and the distinct lack of it when his gaze returns to Sara as he nods his consent to her plan.
Oliver hugs Felicity and briefly touches his lips to the top of her head, at which the blonde smiles dopily and weakly punches him on the shoulder. Oliver chuckles and shakes his head, moving to Sara and offering her cheek a small kiss, too. Sara tries to smile again, and hopes that if Nyssa taught her anything but the skill to be a fighter, she maybe imparted some skill with emotional disguise, too.
Because Nyssa loves Sara with whatever soul she has left, but Sara had never known until Nyssa had decided to tell her.
Nyssa is good at secrets.
Far better at them than Sara, in any case.
Felicity looks questioningly at Sara, obviously wondering if her escort is ready to leave – and it is a fair enough question, because Felicity has been wounded and dosed with painkillers and she has had a stressful few days, anyway, so she must be tired.
She must be so tired, Sara realizes belatedly, and rushes to nod immediately. Oliver chivalrously helps Felicity climb the stairs, and Sara blindly follows. But when the black leather jacket that Felicity had worn to the bank that night catches her eye, Sara's fingers instinctively reach for it, absently stroking the worn material with the pads of her thumbs during her ascent.
Oliver bids them both goodnight with another soft kiss to Sara's mouth after he has Felicity securely tucked into the passenger seat of her car. Sara responds and smiles at him genuinely, because even if she sometimes thinks that she and Oliver have an arrangement built upon convenience and not much else, she does still care for him deeply.
Still, she is easily distracted from thoughts of Oliver by thoughts of Felicity when the blonde lolls her head along the back of the passenger seat to face Sara. The other blonde's eyes sluggishly travel to the jacket that Sara had carefully placed over the center console as she climbed into the car.
"I didn't notice earlier," Sara smiles softly. "You've worn that jacket a lot. I thought – " She cuts herself off, dropping her eyes to Felicity's lap, because how arrogant is it that she had believed Felicity only even owned that jacket because of her desire to emulate Sara?
Sara had thought it sweet, at the time, but now –
Now she is embarrassed by her assumption, because it was clearly untrue. The leather of this jacket is worn, Sara notes again as she picks it up and places it over her thighs, and Felicity must have worn it frequently for so many creases to be evident in its fabric.
"You thought I wore it because of you," Felicity nods matter-of-factly.
Sara flicks her eyes up from beneath hooded lids with a sheepish smile, but they flutter quickly away again, because suddenly Felicity's eyes are both steady and calculating, and far clearer than Sara thinks they have a right to be, given the high dosage of painkillers Diggle had (somewhat illegally) prescribed.
"I did," Felicity tells her.
Sara's eyes snap upward again in confusion and curiosity, but Felicity's eyes are closed, now, so Sara has nothing but her mouth to look at when the other blonde speaks again; Sara thinks that there are much worse things to look at, honestly, because Felicity's mouth is… so pretty. And even though the revelation startles Sara, she cannot bring herself to look away, either.
"I'm jealous," Felicity shrugs sloppily, head still tilted back against her seat and eyes, apparently, still too heavy to open. "Or I was. Of you. And then I wasn't. I mean, I am, because it's not like you don't have anything to be jealous of," she rushes to amend. "Like, hi, you're wildly attractive and have ridiculous abs and you can fight woah kind of impressively, so there's plenty to be jealous of, obviously, and I was," she insists, shaking her head at herself even with her eyes closed.
Sara wants to tell her, again, that she is so, so cute, but she is eager to hear what has changed and she is flattered by Felicity's words, and a larger part of her just selfishly wants them to continue. So Sara waits.
She waits until Felicity's eyes peek open again and the IT girl offers her a lopsided grin.
Felicity struggles to lean forward until she is only two inches from Sara's face, and suddenly Sara is torn between scrambling away – as far away as she can, and suddenly the other half of the world doesn't even feel far enough – and leaning closer to put Felicity's lips closer to her ear in preparation for the secret that Felicity looks ready to share with her.
She stays immobile.
Felicity shares a secret, anyway.
"I have a type, you know," Felicity laughs softly at herself.
"Oh?" Sara's brow lifts, amused with the non sequiter and irrationally pleased with the relief of tension, even if she thinks that Felicity is too doped up to even have noticed said tension's existence.
"Mhmm," Felicity hums with a grin. "Oliver," she nods, as though the fact is simply that – a fact.
And it is.
Sara knows about Felicity's feelings for Oliver, although the feelings between the two are murkily defined, at best – and she knows about Oliver's feelings for Felicity, too.
"I'm sorry," Sara whispers, knowing that although she is not the cause of it, seeing her with Oliver must be difficult for Felicity.
"Don't be," Felicity huffs. "It's not your fault he has a stupid hero complex."
Despite herself, and her guilt, Sara laughs softly. Felicity has quite the capacity for bluntness, and Sara has long believed it to be sweet.
"Barry," Felicity says next.
"Huh?" Sara frowns.
"Friend," Felicity explains. "Struck by lightning," she waves her hand impatiently, like she's over explaining but understands that Sara needs more to go on. "Super fast super hero in Central City."
"I see," Sara nods along, though she is still lost as to how this conversation relates in any way to the one that they were having before. Still, she is amused, and Felicity seems to be enjoying herself, so Sara has no intention of making her stop.
Although, it might be a good idea to actually start driving soon, Sara concedes.
"You," Felicity murmurs softly.
Sara freezes, apart from the slight parting of her lips in surprise, before she stutters out, "What?"
Felicity merely nods and shrinks back in her seat, but she does not tear her gaze from Sara's except to flicker to the jacket draped over her legs.
"I was jealous," Felicity repeats. "And then I wasn't. Because, you know, I've never cared about a woman before. Not like that. Not like this," she corrects. "So I didn't understand and I thought it was jealousy until I remembered – "
"You have a type," Sara smiles, lightly biting her lower lip as Felicity nods emphatically and grins with Sara's understanding.
"I do," Felicity laughs and flushes pink, even through the haze of the drugs, but she shrugs and nods to the jacket. "I had an identity crisis in college. I wore that jacket, then, and really haven't worn it much since, except, you know, when I'm way out of my league and trying to be more attractive than I am, so… there's that," she nods. "But when I was going through my crisis in college, I thought that I didn't want to change. So I bought a new wardrobe and I kept things a little more… professional," she chuckles, and Sara helplessly does, too. "The jacket, though…" Felicity trails off, eyes clouding over as she watches it carefully. "It was my favorite. And I thought, for a second, that when I put it on I might feel- more like myself."
"You were having an identity crisis," Sara realizes.
"Yup," Felicity drops her chin to her chest in a heavy nod just as the 'p' pops off her lips, and Sara smiles affectionately when it looks like the effort to lift her head again causes a small huff of laughter to escape her passenger's mouth.
"Because of me?" Sara hesitates to ask.
"Nope," Felicity shakes her head adamantly. "Because of me. I've never – "
"Cared about a woman before," Sara nods, echoing Felicity's words back at her with an understanding that is purely genuine.
But misplaced.
"I've never been home," Felicity blurts out. She then rolls her eyes and says, "Well, I have a home. Obviously. I didn't just spring into existence on the side of the road. I have a family. You know, a mom. But she was never home and she's- complicated. It's complicated," Felicity puffs her cheeks out and releases a soft stream of air from behind her lips.
Sara wants to know more – desperately – but now is not the time, and Sara already feels a little like she is taking advantage of Felicity's even-looser-than-normal tongue, so she does not ask.
"And, anyway, the point is that I didn't have a home. Or at least nothing that felt like one. And… now I do," she says, smiling softly, but keeping her lips momentarily puckered outward on the final syllable as she evaluates Sara's expression. "But sometimes…" Felicity sighs. "I have a serious thing for heroes, apparently," she scrunches her nose up. "That sounds bad. But it isn't," she declares. "Still, I'm definitely not a hero," she laughs at herself. "I do everything from behind my computers, and it's my happy place, and I'm comfortable there. But even with your training, being shot at is not comfortable," Felicity decides.
"Not usually," Sara agrees with a laugh that spawns from some place in her heart that has long been neglected.
"Exactly," Felicity nods. "So how is it fair that I stay underground with my computers in my comfort zone when you guys have to go outside of yours every other night? I thought, if I put on the jacket, maybe I could remind myself that I used to be a little more reckless; that maybe I need to be a little more reckless to actually help save Starling City."
Sara ponders this quietly, before she reaches to place her palm gently over Felicity's knee. Felicity's head drops so that she can look, and when she raises it again, Sara is almost overwhelmed by how abruptly her own breathing halts.
It's just- people don't look at Sara that way.
People hardly look at Sara at all, and when they do, it doesn't feel like they're looking at her. They see what she has become. They see The Canary, and Sara had worked hard under that name, but she did not leave The League so that she could keep that part of herself alive; she left The League to keep Sara alive – or what was left of her – and even though Felicity, herself, is unique, the look that she is giving Sara now feels like more than that.
The look that she is giving Sara now feels nothing short of precious.
"You break the law, too," Sara says carefully. "You sacrifice, too," she insists. "You are a hero, too, Felicity."
A coy grin creeps up the corners of Felicity's mouth, and Sara is almost ready to feel suspicious of it – almost, because nothing about Felicity Smoak is really 'suspicious' to Sara at all, except, perhaps, to an outsider regarding the executive assistant's relationship to one Oliver Queen.
Still, Sara cannot be wary, because Felicity's next words are hopeful and sly and playful in a way that Sara never really gets to be with anyone.
"D'you think I could be your hero?"
It is hopeful and sly and playful, but there is an undercurrent of desperate sincerity that has Sara wondering how recently Felicity sorted through her feelings, because even though the other blonde claims that this is a recent development, to Sara, it feels like it runs a lot deeper than hero infatuation.
And Sara is no hero, anyway.
But – at least tonight – Felicity is her hero.
This woman took a bullet for Sara, and though bullets have become part and parcel of her life since being stranded by the Queen's Gambit, she is not disillusioned enough of the rest of the world to believe that true of everyone. Felicity did not have Sara's training or preparation or experience with being shot at.
And she took a bullet for her, anyway, despite being terrified.
So Sara reaches up and gently curls a wayward strand of dyed blonde hair behind Felicity's ear, and with her fingers still lingering softly on the genius's cheek, and with said genius purring softly as she blithely pushes her face further into the caress, Sara whispers, "Felicity Smoak, you already are my hero."
Part of it is to comfort Felicity, but a larger part of Sara knows that it is truth, because even before Felicity's brave actions tonight, the blonde saves Sara in ways that Nyssa never did.
She lets her just… be. Felicity allows Sara to be whichever part of herself she most identifies with on any given day, and Felicity does not judge or criticize or lecture. Felicity just lets her be.
"I'm your hero," Felicity echoes softly, a tiny quirk of a self-satisfied smile itching at her mouth. Seeking more of Sara's touch and raising a slowly moving palm to hug the former assassin's fingers, urging them more firmly against her face, Felicity looks up at Sara with soft, sleepy blue eyes, and murmurs, "I keep you safe."
Sara doesn't need to be protected, but protected is not safe, and they are not the same. Sara knows that, and she thinks that Felicity must, too, because if all she meant was that she would keep her from harm – which Sara could more easily do on her own, honestly – then Felicity would not still be looking at her that way.
"I'm your hero," Felicity whispers again, holding Sara's fingers still as she moves the palm of Sara's hand to her lips and presses her mouth against it.
Felicity doesn't quite kiss her hand; just keeps her lips tucked securely to the center of it and breathes a delicate sigh that Sara cannot decipher.
She does not understand Felicity Smoak, and she might never understand her; Sara may be too damaged to conceive of the light that inherently blares from Felicity Smoak's soul. But that same light is precisely what makes Felicity her hero, because Sara can never have that light back, and she'd lost it the moment the sea had pulled her from Oliver's father's yacht.
Sara thinks that Felicity would have held onto her light longer.
Sara thinks that maybe she might have a hero infatuation, too.
Author's Note: So, I just watched Arrow, and I've decided I hardcore ship Smoaking Canary - which is actually a little depressing considering that this ship is virutally nonexistent on this site. I've found several at AO3, but I only really post there when I remember to do so and FF is basically my internet home, so this is me making an effort to start a crew for the ship over here. Don't let me down, guys! Please review, and thanks for reading. This is my first Arrow fic, and I'm trying to keep everyone in character, so please tell me if I've made a mess of it.