A/N: I kind of put Sara through hell in this one...sorry Sara! But Len comforting her is so cute...

Disclaimer: If I owned LoT, Len wouldn't be dead and Captain Canary would have been more than casual flirting and one kiss. So basically no, it's not mine.

Day 8: Broken Arrows

She took it hard.

Leonard hadn't really expected her to take it any other way, but it still pained him to see how distraught she was. She'd been through too much in her life, he thought. Dying multiple times, losing her sister, losing her father, and now Oliver...

There was a reason she had finally broken.

Her father was alive again due to Oliver's sacrifice, which was only small comfort. Leonard knew this. And yet, despite the fact that they all mourned, none of the team took the initiative to go try and console Sara.

Until Leonard couldn't stand it anymore, and did that very thing.

As he had the day before the Oculus explosion (which still haunted his dreams at night, though he hadn't told anybody that), Leonard appeared in Sara's doorway to find her laying on her back on her bed. She looked over and he pulled out the card deck he'd stolen from Salvation, which he always kept in his pocket.

"Not now, Leonard," Sara sighed.

Leonard had expected that, but it hadn't been for lack of trying. He came into the room anyway.

"Go away," Sara told him.

"I will do no such thing," Leonard replied.

Sara glared at him. "I'm your captain. If I have to make it an order, I will."

"I still wouldn't obey," Leonard said. "You know that about me."

Sara sighed again. "Yeah, I do."

Leonard perched himself on the edge of her bed. She sat up, though it seemed rather reluctant. Leonard studied her with his icy eyes, noting how depressed she looked. She'd obviously been crying, which was understandable, and her hair was a mess, though in Leonard's opinion that just made her look more beautiful.

"You're not okay," Leonard said, taking a different approach than most people would.

"Thank you for noticing," Sara said, slightly sarcastically. "Most people would have asked."

"I'm not most people, in case you hadn't noticed," Leonard reminded her. "Besides, I think it's a waste of time to ask someone if they're okay when they're clearly not."

"Good logic," Sara told him. "Now why are you here?"

Leonard hesitated a minute, trying to decide what to say. Because I care about you was most definitely not his style, nor was Because you're hurting and I love you. He debated a moment, then deicded on: "Because you looked like you needed a friend."

Sara gazed at him with keen eyes. "Is that what we are, Leonard?" she asked. "Friends?"

Fuck. She'd trapped him in a corner of his own making. Leonard searched for a way out, and found one: "Are we?"

Sara watched him a moment; then, apparently deciding to let his answer-that-wasn't-an-answer slide, leaned back against the wall. "I'm fine. Now go away."

"And yet you just admitted that you're not okay," Leonard drawled. "And we've already established that I'm not going anywhere."

Sara groaned. "You're not giving up, are you?"

"Nope," Leonard said.

Sara sighed again. "Might as well drop the charade of normalcy then."

"You or me?" Leonard asked. "I'm not pretending everything is normal, Sara."

"Good, because it's not," Sara said. "Oliver's gone. He's dead. And while we gave him the private superhero-only funeral and the public one with his family and the friends he brought back from the dead, that didn't lessen the pain any. We even got the president to give a formal address about him, and it still did nothing. I've had to be strong about this, but now, back here on the Waverider and away from it all...it's too much to keep up the facade."

Leonard shifted closer. "You don't have to pretend, Sara," he said. "Not with me. I didn't know the guy all that well, but I do know he was one of your oldest friends and that he meant a lot to you. You deserve this time to grieve more than anyone."

Sara drew her knees up and buried her face in them, probably to hide the fact that she was crying again. Leonard, partially moving on instinct and partially because he had no idea what else to do, scooted closer and wrapped his arms around her He expected resistance, or for her to pull sharply away in confusion. He hadn't expected her to relax into his embrace like she did.

He went with it. He pulled her closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and burying his face in her hair, breathing in her scent. He could her her muffled crying and murmured to her, meaningless words meant to comfort and only to comfort. Not soemthing he would normally have done, but Sara was the exception to all his rules (except the ones about plans...those he stuck to, mostly because shit always happened that way).

Sara calmed herslef down after a while, and once Leonard noted she was calm he made a move to pull away. Sara, apparently, had other plans, becuase as he pulled away she reached out, siezed his shirt, pulled him down, and kissed him.

It was the first time they'd kissed since the Oculus, and Leonard responded instantly, kissing her back. He hadn't realized how much he wanted this until they were in the midst of doing it.

Sara pulled away first.

"For the record, I didn't know I was going to do that," Sara said.

"I don't mind," Leonard replied quickly. He was silent a moment, then: "Feel better?"

Sara smirked at him. "Maybe. Stay with me anyway?"

Leonard smirked back. "I told you, Sara - I'm not going anywhere."

Yay, a fluffy ending! Up next we have a Destiny fix-it, so yeah. I mean these are all sort of Destiny fix-its but eh. Please leave reviews!