The characters from Arrow are not mine, darn it. I will return them all safely to The CW, DC Entertainment, et al. after I am done playing with them.
Time To Let Go
Felicity Smoak leaned against the outer door to the Arrow Cave, taking deep breaths and trying not to let the threatening tears fall.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Felicity berated herself.
In the last two weeks Team Arrow had learned to make an unholy racket while entering the lair. After the second time Digg had interrupted Oliver and Sara's Very Special Training Time, Felicity had rigged them an extra lockout code to act as virtual sock on the doorknob.
Three digits. On any terminal in the lair, or any keypad, or one of their cell phones. That was all it took.
They hadn't managed to use it once.
Embarrassing encounters aside, Felicity was happy for them.
No, really, she was. They were both good people who had survived terrible things. If they found comfort in one another …
Felicity wouldn't like herself much if she begrudged them that just because she still had some silly hopes she hadn't managed to quash, no matter how hard she tried.
And she liked Sara. She and Sara might even be in the process of becoming, well, if not friends, then friendly. And Sara had needed a friend badly after the welcome (so not!) she had gotten from her sister.
Sara couldn't vent about Laurel to Oliver. She had too much guilt and grief from her actions 6 years ago. And Oliver still clung to the last shards of that porcelain goddess image of Laurel he had built up on the island looking at that damn picture of her.
So Felicity had provided the pints of Ben & Jerry's and the boxes of Kleenex while Sara worked her way through the hurt of Laurel's continuing rejection.
And could she just say, if it were up to her, Laurel would get such a slap upside the head! Hell, if Felicity's deadbeat dad showed up after all his years of absence, providing medical care to the whole third world or whatever he was doing, Felicity would at least want to ask him some questions.
Even if Laurel couldn't forgive Sara for sleeping with her boyfriend, she could at least acknowledge Sarah's re-existence and put their parents out of their misery. After all the story of how Oliver came to be Laurel's boyfriend instead of Sara's wasn't so pretty either.
Sara had needed friendship and comfort and all sorts of support in the days since Nyssa had released her from the League and made Sara's life her own again. And in those days Sara had shown that she had an understanding of Oliver that Laurel would never be able to touch with the longest pole in all the world.
Felicity had accepted that Sara and Oliver were together now. She'd even accepted that sometimes she might witness more of that togetherness than she was strictly comfortable with.
Felicity had no one but herself to blame for seeing what she had seen.
She had been so excited at the news that Barry was showing signs of waking up. She had just bopped happily into the lair at the crack of dawn. She was sure that Oliver could have no objections to her heading to Central City. She thought she would just set up her systems to run themselves for a few days, make a quick stop at the office to do the same there and then head out of town.
And there they were. Having sex on her desk. In front of her computers. With her belongings strewn over the floor where they had been swept aside. So wrapped up in each other they didn't hear her cry of dismay or see her rush back out the door.
"That sound you hear, Felicity. That's the last of your delusions shattering." Her whispered words blowing away in the wind outside the lair. "Now push yourself away from this damn door. The first train to Central City leaves in 2 hours and you are going to be on it. It's time to go find a life for yourself that isn't centered on the hope that Oliver Queen will notice you standing there after he has screwed every other woman in Starling."
Felicity Smoak wiped her eyes, squared her shoulders and walked off to find a new future that she would make for herself.
Oliver Queen was ashamed. Even after all the things he'd been through, all the ways the island had changed him, shame wasn't an emotion he was used to feeling.
He couldn't believe he and Sara had been so anxious to bury their pain in each other that he'd actually used Felicity's desk to …
He knew how important it was to Felicity that she had space of her own in the lair. It was the space that told Felicity Smoak that she was part of this team. It was the one spot of brightness in the dark of the world he'd created down here.
He finished replacing the office supplies and tchotchkes Felicity kept on her desk, hoping he got them in the right places.
His cell phone chimed. He had a text.
O –
Barry is waking up! YAY! On the way to Central City to be the first thing he sees.
Talk to you soon.
F.