Sara spending the night becomes a regular thing. Felicity has no idea what time she'll show up at, it varies depending on whether she was bartending or down in the basement. They usually end up on the couch in front of the TV, but since Felicity's mouth gets ahead of her brain, she can't help but ask questions, especially since there is rarely anything on worth watching. Though there are plenty of things that Sara seems reluctant to answer, Felicity never gets the sense that she necessarily minds that the questions are being asked. Which means that Felicity keeps asking.
It's a nice routine; even if it's only for a few hours. Because for all the time she spends at Queen Consolidated or in the Foundry, Felicity enjoys being able to relax in her apartment, even briefly and remember a time when her world didn't revolve around Oliver Queen.
Not that she regrets having met him. Being part of Team Arrow is part of who she is now. And they are doing a lot of good. But every once in a while, Felicity wants a moment to just breath. Hanging out with Sara seems to be one way to do so.
Because of this, Felicity does fall into the habit of waiting up for Sara, though she does try to fill that time with things that need to be done, like cleaning her apartment or continuing her investigation of Kevin's disappearance. The first few times, Felicity had tried to tell herself that she wasn't staying awake because of Sara. But Felicity's always been fairly self aware and doesn't believe in lying to herself, so once she admits that she is waiting up for Sara, an odd calm falls over her and she finds ways to be productive around her apartment in order to stay awake.
Sara seems more open about her past than Oliver is. Though she doesn't necessarily answer Felicity's questions, she does share things occasionally and so in turn, Felicity tries to share things as well. It makes her realize that for how close she, Oliver and Dig are, they actually know very little about each other's personal lives. The most is known about Oliver's, past and present, but that's only because they're always having to deal with it. And then, a lot of the time, she kind of wishes she didn't.
Part of Felicity wants to tell Sara what she discovered about Mrs. Queen, even though she knows it's not her secret to share. She wants to tell Diggle too. They're up against much more than just the unknown darkness that lurks in Starling; Mrs. Queen is a force to be reckoned with, causing Felicity to worry about all the secrets she's still keeping and what it'll do to Oliver and even Thea.
…
The closer she and Sara become, the more often Felicity feels Sara watching her.
The first time it happens, Felicity tries to ignore the eyes obviously studying her, but eventually she gives in and glances around. Felicity's gaze finally settles on Sara, who is watching her with a soft smile on her face. When their eyes meet, Sara winks and then returns to working out. Felicity isn't expecting the wink and it fills her with a warm glow.
It becomes a regular thing. To the point where if Felicity feels eyes watching her, she doesn't even have to look up, she knows it's Sara watching her. Felicity finds that she doesn't mind, enjoying the flutter in her stomach that only increases when she meets Sara's gaze and receives a wink.
…
Felicity tries to follow the money that was stolen from the various charities. She decides to start with the most recent one of $23,000. The trail is easy enough to find, but it turns cold faster than she expected. Incredibly frustrated, she tackles the $30,000 next. But once again, after following the trail's various twists and turns, she loses it. Felicity refuses to be give up; she is smarter than whoever is behind this and she will find them, so she chases the $35,000 next. This one she's able to follow the longest before hitting a wall.
Leaning back in her chair and staring at the screens, Felicity lets her mind wander instead of screaming in frustration. There's something she's missing, something that her brain is trying to tell her, but she just can't seem to grasp it. Taking a deep breath, she faces the screens again, and instead of trying to follow the money through its various routes and rerouting, tries to sort through what her brain is trying to tell her.
It eventually works and she's picked up the trail again. Apparently she's found it near the end because it doesn't take Felicity long to figure out where the charity money ended up.
To her horror, it's even worse than she imagined. Though things have started to improve in the Glades, there are still plenty of problems, including people seemingly just disappearing without a trace. Felicity has found where they're disappearing to.
There's a website, auctioning off people for the sole purpose of killing them. The auctions last for about a week and at any given time there seems to be at least three to six auctions occurring at one time. Looking over the descriptions of people for sale, Felicity finds that almost all of them match the descriptions of people who have been reported missing. What's even more appalling (which considering how close Felicity is to vomiting at this point, is saying a lot) is that once you have won the auction, there is an option to pay even more in relation to how the person dies. The more elaborate the death, the more money it costs; and what's worse is the very vivid descriptions.
It's at this point that Felicity loses it and barely makes it to bathroom. Once she's emptied her stomach, rinsed her mouth and splashed water onto her face, she returns shakily to her computers. Thankfully, she's alone in the basement; it's early on a Sunday and she couldn't really sleep, so she'd come to the Foundry since Sara had actually been sleeping soundly for once. Though she hates being down here alone with what she's found, she's also glad that she doesn't have to explain to anyone what she's just discovered.
Felicity's starting to develop a few theories surrounding Kevin's mysterious job offer and it's not pleasant. And even though she should probably keep looking for more evidence, she doesn't feel mentally stable enough. Instead, she decides to head back to her apartment. She definitely won't be able to sleep, but at least she won't be alone and hopefully, she can find something sufficiently distracting.
Though there's no definitive proof, Felicity's instinct says that whoever is behind the murder website and the missing charity money is also behind the deaths of Kevin, Paul Launders and Dani Johnstone. She's learned to trust her instincts over the last year. Felicity really hopes that her assessment is correct, because, at the moment, she really can't handle the notion that there's so many sick bastards walking around Starling City.
She's going to have to talk to the team soon because the severity of the situation is so much worse than she ever imagined. The only problem is that she really doesn't have a lot to go on yet. She didn't really want to bring it up to the others until she had a definite target. Felicity wonders if she should seek out more evidence or search harder for the person responsible; maybe both.
God, she really hopes that Sara is up and still in her apartment.
…
The more time Sara spends with Felicity, the less time she's spending with Oliver. Oddly, it's not something that occurs to either of them immediately. Probably because they spend so much time together anyway; between training Roy, their own personal training and hooding up (Felicity always grins when she says this, saying that Sara putting on the wig is close enough, despite the irritated looks Sara shoots her), they do spend most of their time together.
But beyond the sex and the shared history of hell, Sara's not sure that there's enough there to sustain a relationship.
She's at the mat, stretching, watching Oliver shoot arrows at tennis balls. As he hits one ball with two arrows, Sara can't help but wonder if he's actually surpassed Nyssa in skill. When they'd been battling for her life, Sara had just assumed that Oliver's own tenacity made up for Nyssa's pure skill. And maybe it still does.
Watching him, Sara realizes that what she feels for him isn't necessarily romantic. She knows too much has happened for it to be anything like what she felt before the Queen's Gambit went down or even when they met up again the island a year later. But she can't quite categorize what she feels for him. It makes her wonder if they fell into bed together because it was easy. She knows Oliver struggles with not having someone who understands him. Diggle probably does more than most and while Felicity is immensely understanding and lacking in judgment (to a certain extent), Ollie longs for someone who truly identifies with his struggle. And even though what happened to them after they presumed the other one died changed them in vastly different ways, they've somehow managed to find each other again and take up the same cause. Their initial attraction and connection should only have been heightened by the similarities of their pasts.
However, Sara's not sure she wants that in a relationship anymore. She had that with Nyssa too, to a certain extent; that shared understanding of the darkness being embraced. It helped her deal with the killing and what she'd done to survive. But apparently she wasn't built for it long term. Returning to Starling City to check up on her family had been a sincere need, but it also masked her larger goal of escaping, even though she knew it would have dire consequences. She's starting to realize that not only can she no longer handle the killing, she also wants there to be some light in her life.
Being with Ollie is comfortable, but it's been a long time since she's done something for that reason and she can't believe she let herself fall into that trap again. Even if things are better, it's still dangerous to let herself go down that route.
Sara sighs because she and Oliver are probably going to have to have a serious talk soon.
A/N: Yes, I took the idea of auctioning off people to be killed from Hostel.