–Something–

Sara waited as long as she could stand after they handed Slade off to Waller.

She saw Nyssa and her men off at the docks, and when Nyssa had told her that she would be back again, all Sara had said was, "I know." She had kissed Nyssa's cheek before she had turned and left, accepting that she would see her former-lover again. It was just a question of when.

She stopped by the precinct to see her father and talk to him about the citizens of Starling City and what she could do to help.
"There's not much you can do now, sweetie," her father had told her. "Let us take it from here, okay? The SCPD can handle this one."
"Dad, the Mayor, the DA, and the Chief of Police are all dead, that's going to cause city-wide chaos," she had told him.
"We're figuring it out. It's gonna be okay," he had assured her, kissing her on her forehead before he had been called away again.

She had called Oliver to see how and what everyone was doing. He told her that he and Thea and Roy were getting out of town for awhile; as were Diggle and Lyla, although separately from the Queens. Laurel was doing better, and she was at the DA's office trying to do damage control. Sin was laying low at the clocktower. Felicity was probably back at the foundry already.

So Sara headed over to the foundry, unable to stay away anymore. It was as much time and space as she could give Felicity to process everything without knowing if she was really okay. It was nearly dark once again when she arrived at the old steel mill, and it seemed odd not seeing the lights and patrons of Verdant or hearing the pounding club music. Of course, it had seemed strange the first time she had come, but now she was able to focus on more than just not letting Slade kill her.

He almost did.

He would have, if it hadn't been for Felicity.

When she walked down the foundry steps, the lights were all low and Felicity's silhouette was simply sitting on the steel table. Sara turned on the lights but Felicity still didn't move, too lost in her own thoughts to register Sara's presence or the sudden new brightness of the room. It worried Sara that Felicity wasn't more on-guard, but she supposed now wouldn't be the time to bring it up. Felicity could brood in her state of oblivion if she wanted to, but Sara felt inclined to at least let her know that she was here.

"Hey," Sara said softly, coming up to Felicity and running a hand across her back as she circled around to face her.

"Hi," Felicity said, sounding not unpleasantly surprised. "You're still here."

Sara laughed lightly. "Was I not supposed to be?" she asked.

Felicity's face scrunched up in what Sara thought was an impossibly adorable expression. "No, no! It's just . . . the League and Nyssa and . . ." Felicity trailed off, but she reached forward and took Sara's hand.

"Nyssa and her men came here of their own free will," Sara said. "They arrived in Starling before I even got the chance to call them. I saw them off at the docks this morning." Felicity looked too relieved and Sara felt obligated to warn her, "They will be back for me though. I owed a debt to Ra's al Ghul before I ever set foot back in Starling City, and now I owe Nyssa a debt as well, for saving you from Slade and for coming here when we desperately needed help."

Felicity suddenly looked a lot less at ease. "Will they make you rejoin?"

Sara thought about it for a moment before answering, "Nothing could make me rejoin the League. I think Nyssa knows that, and if she knows it, then so does her father. I've been released from my allegiance to the League of Assassins; short of assassinating me, there's nothing Ra's or Nyssa can do."

"That's a pretty big 'short of', Sara," Felicity snapped without meaning to.

"But they won't," Sara assured her. "Especially once I pay my debts to the al Ghul family. The League of Assassins live by a strict code of honor. To kill me without cause when I've been released by Nyssa and paid my debts would be to break that code."

Felicity was quiet for awhile. She nodded her head thoughtfully before looking up to Sara again. "But you'll have to go back eventually," she said with a hint of something in her voice that Sara couldn't quite put a name to.

"But not right now," Sara told her, "and not forever."

Felicity nodded again and, after a moment of silence, asked, "Um, would it be okay if I . . . you know, hugged you now?"

Sara's face split into an enormous smile. "Yeah, I think I'd be okay with that," she replied amusedly.

When Felicity stepped into her arms, Sara wrapped her up tight. She hadn't hugged many people since she'd been back: her father, her mom, Laurel, Sin, and Ollie. Hugging Felicity felt different. Sara thought it was a pretty great kind of different, and she hugged Felicity a little tighter, until she heard Felicity wince and she remembered that the girl had been shot less than twenty-four hours ago.

"Sorry," she said, quickly letting go of the IT-girl. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Felicity put a hand on her chest. "Ah," she hissed. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Sara quirked an unimpressed eyebrow at her. "Really? You're going to play the 'tough girl' card now?" she deadpanned with just the lightest touch of amusement in her voice. "I'm calling your bluff, Smoak. Let's take a look."

"Really, Sara. It's fine," Felicity assured her, even as Sara reached forward and began unbuttoning Felicity's shirt. Felicity flushed bright scarlet, and not entirely out of embarrassment; her skin felt hot wherever Sara's skin accidently brushed even lightly against hers.

Sara undid the last button and pushed the light fabric off Felicity's shoulders. She took one look at the angry black-and-blue welts on Felicity's chest and sighed. "Yeesh! You really were down-playing it, weren't you?" Sara remarked knowingly.

"I bruise easily. It's not as bad as it looks," the other girl argued with a roll of her eyes.

The ex-assassin looked Felicity straight in the eyes and ordered, "Tell the truth."

That seemed to be all it took to get Felicity to confess. "Fine. It hurts, okay? I think it might hurt even worse than the time I was actually shot."

Chuckling to herself, Sara told her, "That's because you were doped up on those 'aspirins' Digg gave you."

Felicity tipped her head back and groaned toward the ceiling. "I wonder if he has any more," she mused.

Sara laughed as she ran her fingers from the soft, creamy skin of Felicity's unharmed chest to the hard, dark bruise. Felicity gasped a little when Sara touched the impacted area, but she did her best not to make it noticeable. Sara had to hand it to her, Felicity handled pain pretty well for someone who didn't experience it all that often.

"Does it hurt all the time?" Sara asked.

The corners of Felicity's mouth quirked upwards. "Only when I breathe," she answered flippantly.

Sara laughed and rolled her eyes at her friend, before beginning to button up Felicity's shirt again. "Felicity Smoak, you really are something else," she told her, squeezing Felicity's hand when all the buttons were done up.

Felicity jumped down from the table, putting the two eye-to-eye once more. She winced again but composed herself quickly. Her hand touched Sara's cheek and their eyes met as Felicity murmured, "So are you."

The next few days passed by in a blur. Everywhere Felicity went, there were city workers out cleaning up the mess that Slade and his men had caused. By the next week, Starling was starting to look a little less like a tornado-torn town and a little more like its usual self. The police had squashed any riots that began brewing before they got out of control, keeping everyone calm under the supervision of interim Chief of Police Quentin Lance. Laurel was busy answering the demands that came with temporarily overseeing the District Attorney's office, and Sara was keeping the streets clean and trying to round up all of Slade's recently 'de-mirakuru-ed' convict soldiers by night. She spent her days with Felicity, sometimes joined by Sin, trying to fix up the damages done to the abandoned foundry; with Isabel Rochev dead and most of Queen Consolidated's shareholders scattered across the globe trying to save face from electing a super villainess as their CEO, no one was around to have any say about an old out-of-commission steel factory.

Oliver called Felicity frequently to check in on everyone. He, Thea, and Roy had found themselves in Gotham City, though he wouldn't say much more about what they were doing there. Felicity had a sneaking suspicion that she could guess anyway. There had been stories going back years of a bat-like costumed man putting lunatic criminals in Arkham Asylum like billionaire Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises put money in the bank. But Felicity didn't press Oliver. It was probably better if she didn't know.

Digg had called yesterday to reassure Felicity that he and Lyla were both fine, just in need of a little vacation. He teased that he had a lot of big news to tell them all when he got back, but he wouldn't say when and he wouldn't give her a hint as to what the 'big news' was. It was frustrating and she knew that he knew that.

Felicity had to admit, as much as her boys sometimes drove her crazy, she missed them. Despite their war-torn city, things felt boring without Digg calling to tell her they needed her to research something or Oliver stumbling into the lair with a bullet somewhere in him or Roy getting mad and punching an appendage off one of the practice dummies. Having Sara still with her was Felicity's only saving grace.

It was late when she got home that night, and she was still nowhere near done working. Chief Lance had asked her to do some 'computer-tech-stuff' for some of the local precincts that were trying to track down Slade's former-acolytes. It was really the least she could do, since he had sort of saved her life with the bulletproof vest. She didn't mention a word to him about the many generous donations that the Starling City relief fund had been mysteriously receiving from its wealthy citizens, all of whom just happened to be names in Robert Queen's little black book. He didn't ask, so she didn't tell him what she did in her down time. They worked together on a strictly need-to-know basis, and that worked just fine for the both of them.

No sooner had Felicity walked through her door when her phone rang. She checked the screen to see none other than Sara's name and face displayed across it. Kicking her door closed behind her with her foot, Felicity couldn't help the smile on her face as she set her bags down and quickly answered the call before it went to voicemail.

"This has better be a personal call, Lance," she told Sara playfully.

"Very funny," Sara deadpanned. "Whatever happened to a nice 'hey, Sara! I was just thinking about you' for a greeting?"

"Hi, Sara! I was just thinking about you," Felicity repeated with amusement. Lightning flashed in the sky as thunder literally rocked the ground, and Felicity worriedly added, "If you're still out on your nightly prowl, I'd get inside in a hurry. The storm's coming."

Sara laughed at her and Felicity decided it was the best sound she had heard in a month.

"Are you home?" Sara asked.

Pressing her phone between her ear and shoulder blade, Felicity began making herself tea. "Yeah. Just got in. Why?"

Felicity was suddenly on high-alert when she heard her bedroom window slide open and a set of footsteps coming in off the fire escape. "Because the sound you probably just heard was me," Sara told her, stepping forth from Felicity's bedroom and ending the call as they could now speak to each other face to face. Sara was still wearing her Canary suit from her nightly patrol of the city, but she was dripping went from being caught out in the rain. "Storm's already here, by the way."

With a light chuckle and an amused shaking of her head, Felicity ducked into her bathroom for a moment to grab a couple towels, then she went back to Sara. "I guess so," she laughed, throwing a towel over Sara's shoulders and bundling her up. Felicity took the wig off and began drying Sara's natural hair, leaving the towel on the other woman's head when she went to remove the mask.

It felt like a blessing and a curse to be able to look into Sara's blue eyes, so filled with humor and so incredibly clear and warm. It was all Felicity could do not to get lost in them. Little did she realize that Sara had already gotten lost in hers. The Canary reached a hand up to tuck a loose curl behind Felicity's ear, not realizing that her hands were cold until Felicity took them both and pressed them to her neck to warm them.

"How long were you out there in this storm?" Felicity questioned, worry tainting her every syllable and making clear just how concerned she was. "You're freezing. I should probably get you out of your clothes." Felicity stopped and made a face as she heard her own words, "I mean, we– I mean, you. You should probably change clothes. And take a hot shower. Not that you–" Halting in her attempts to save face, Felicity finished with, "You know what? I'm going to stop talking now. You're staying here tonight. That is, if you want to. But you don't have to! I mean, I not going to force you to–"

Felicity stopped suddenly again and turned on her heel.

"Hey Felicity!" Sara called after her. The girl stopped and looked over her shoulder at Sara, who beamed and told her, "Thanks. You're still cute."

. . .

When Sara stepped out of the shower, she turned toward the foggy mirror and smoothed her hand in a circle across its surface to clear it. She looked at her reflection and, for once, she didn't immediately look away. Her eyes were a clear steel-blue and an unwitting smile had been tugging at the corners of her mouth. For the first time in years, she didn't see a cold-blooded killer who had just finished washing the blood off her hands; Sara saw the faint glimmer of someone else, someone entirely new to her. She was neither the petty and selfish young girl from her early life nor the single-minded and expedient survivor she had become since then. This time Sara was choosing her own fate.

Her mind told her not to get too used to that, knowing that anything could happen at any moment and that sooner or later the League of Assassins would come to collect on the debts she owed to them. Her heart, however, was a completely different story; her heart had hope. She was surrounded by people she trusted – her friends and her family – and she knew that she was safe with them. She would worry about Ra's and Nyssa when the time came. One thing at a time, was what her father had always told her.

It was as if someone had dived deep into the darkness inside Sara and found that final faint glimmer of light that still existed in those dark recesses and dragged it to the surface.

Sara smiled at her reflection a final time and then she ducked out of the bathroom and into Felicity's room next door. Felicity was laying stomach-down on her bed with her laptop open in front of her and her glasses slightly askew. She looked up when she sensed Sara come into the room, and a sweet blush flourished across her cheeks and down her neck.

Sara thought it was perfectly adorable that after all the times she had stripped out of her clothes to don her Canary suit in the middle of the lair, Felicity was still shy and polite and turned her eyes away after scanning Sara's body when she thought Sara hadn't noticed yet. "Sorry, I didn't mean to– You're just . . . Abs– And just . . . Wow!" Felicity had rambled, when Sara had caught her one day. Sara had just given her a cheeky grin and a wink in response, which had only served to make Felicity turn an even deeper shade of crimson. Sometimes it was fun to mess with Felicity, but other times all Sara wanted was to tell her that she liked when Felicity stared. She wondered if Felicity suspected that already, and was just too shy and polite to ask about it.

"I'll step out so you can get dressed. You can borrow anything you want out of my closet or the dresser," Felicity offered, and before Sara could even tell her that it was fine that she stayed, Felicity was out with the door closed behind her.

Sara sighed. She could seduce strapping EMTs, entice handsome billionaire playboys, and even make lethally sexy assassin heirs fall in love with her. So what was it going to take to catch the eye of a painfully gorgeous IT-girl with an innate ability to see the best in people?

. . .

After awhile of Felicity sitting cross-legged on her couch typing on her computer, she heard her bedroom door open and looked up to find Sara standing in the doorway. The older girl was wearing Felicity's old, well-worn, heather gray MIT t-shirt, along with a wild smile and not much else. Sara gracefully threw herself over the arm of the couch and sat down at the end opposite Felicity. She perked her head up as if she was trying to peer over Felicity's laptop screen.

"You look hard at work on something," she commented. Pushing her foot playfully against Felicity's, she asked, "What is it?"

"Software," Felicity answered. "My own software. I've been writing it since I was sixteen, but computers are so progressive now that it's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I think it's ready, someone puts out something bigger and better."

"You'll figure it out," Sara reassured her. "You always do."

Felicity looked her in the eye and smiled. "Thanks. I'm just hoping it's enough."

"Enough for what?" Sara asked.

With a wry look, Felicity answered, "Enough to put Queen Consolidated back in good standing. If we can market this, we might stand a fighting chance in hell of saving the company."

Sara looked at Felicity and smiled in awe and affection. Felicity had spent the last nine years of her life developing a technology worthy of recognition, and even now, that wasn't what she was looking for. Felicity didn't care about fame or personal wealth; all she wanted to do was replenish and stabilize her best friend's company.

After awhile, Felicity caught on to Sara's staring and she looked up to meet Sara's eyes with caution. "What?" she asked slowly.

"Just . . . you," Sara said. "Will you never stop amazing me?"

"Why would I do that? It would take all the fun out of our relationship," Felicity joked.

They fell into a peaceful silence. There was no sound between them apart from the rain pouring down outside the window and the tapping of Felicity's fingers against her keyboard. In the silence, Sara laid back on her end of the sofa, resting her head against the arm and allowing her feet to encroach upon Felicity's unmarked space, until their feet were tangled together. Felicity glanced up once briefly with what looked like a secretive smile, but she didn't say anything, so Sara felt safe to continue slowly rubbing the inside of her foot against Felicity's ankle.

It was such a simple act, yet it was weighted with something that the both of them recognized. Done purely out of an innocent desire to bridge the gap between them and be connected in some way, this small bit of contact wasn't charged but rather comforting. Sara expected nothing from Felicity and vice versa, yet it made them both feel close to one another.

They kept this up until eventually, Sara couldn't hold back her yawn anymore.

Felicity's head perked up in attention, which would have been comical if not for the expression of deep concern on her face. She turned her head to look at the clock, and her eyes widened when she realized that the time was nearly three in the morning. Felicity looked back to Sara apologetically.

"It's late– or early, depending on how you look at it. You should get some sleep," Felicity told her. "My bed is all yours tonight."

Sara frowned, which Felicity thought was kind of uncharacteristically adorable. "I'm not commandeering your bed, Felicity. Unless you want to share?"

Felicity blanched for all of five seconds before her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're doing that thing where you purposely try to get me flustered again, aren't you," she questioned.

Sara wanted to say that no, she really wasn't, but she changed her mind at the last second and hid her thoughts with a smile. "You caught me," she played along. She saw something flicker across Felicity's features, but it was gone so fast that Sara didn't have time to analyze it. "Seriously, Felicity. I'll be fine on your incredibly comfortable couch tonight." She held up three fingers, "Scout's honor."

"You're not a scout," Felicity pointed out.

"I'm The Canary," Sara replied with a shrug. "I'm whatever people need me to be."

Felicity stood and then bent down to kiss Sara's cheek, lingering for a moment longer than necessary, before she drew back and looked into Sara's eyes. "You're Sara Lance, and you are everything we need you to be," Felicity told her. "Goodnight, Sara."

Still in her surprised state of astonishment, Sara lifted her hand to her cheek where Felicity had kissed her. "Goodnight, Felicity."

. . .

As Felicity laid in her bed that night, staring up at the ceiling, she thought about Sara's offer. Unless you want to share? Sara had said. At first Felicity had thought Sara was trying to get her blushing and tongue-tied as usual, but when she had guessed as much, she thought there had been a sadness to Sara's smile, as if she really hadn't been joking at all.

It was impossible, Felicity knew that. Sara was beautiful and strong; she could kick ass, she could analyze DNA, and she could make anyone from a playboy billionaire to the daughter of Ra's al Ghul fall in love with her. She was a mystery, a complexity, and an enigma, one that Felicity knew she could never possibly hope to unravel or clarify or understand. Sara was burned and scarred and broken, and yet that somehow only served to make Felicity want her all the more.

Felicity was a protector and caretaker to all her hero friends, but she didn't just want to protect and take care of Sara. Felicity wanted to allow herself to fall for her. In the end, she thought maybe she already had.

She fell asleep that night wishing she had taken Sara up on her offer, if only so she could pretend for a little while that Sara could ever someday be hers.

A/N: This is mostly just a filler chapter to show where everyone is after the battle. Next chapter there will be ensuing craziness when Felicity and Sara have to take on a mysterious foe by themselves without any help from the rest of Team Arrow.