First of all, I would like to say that I am so so sorry it took me so long to update this story! Real life kind of got in the way of writing recently and I got sidetracked with a few new pairings I've collected, but rest assured that Smoaking Canary (Saracity) will always be my all time favorite! Updates will continue to come and hopefully at a rate of more than one per month .. . .. I'll work on it, promise! Thanks everyone!
– Redux –
Six Months Later
Felicity squinted as the bright early morning sunlight hit her face, waking her from her peaceful sleep. She opened her eyes and the first thing that greeted her were the deepest pair of soulful green eyes she had ever seen. Sara smiled at Felicity as her head slid across the pillow toward the beautiful IT-girl, and their lips finally met. Sara's hand lighted on Felicity's face, thumb gently stroking the soft skin of her cheek. When they separated after a few moments, Sara's crooked smile was brighter than ever.
"Good morning, baby," Sara said softly. "How was your night?"
There was nothing Felicity could do to stop the blinding smile that formed on her face. "Wonderful," she answered honestly, "just like it always is when you're sleeping beside me."
"I know the feeling," the older blonde agreed.
Sara was looking at Felicity like she was the most amazing thing ever to be seen. Their legs intertwined under the covers and every few minutes Sara would lean in to steal kisses from Felicity's lips. Not that Sara really had to steal them. Felicity would have been all too happy to have Sara kiss her forever. It was mornings like these, when they were both laying on their sides facing each other, cocooned together in the fluffy blankets in the warmth and serenity of their soft bed, that made the world outside the windows seemed cold and lackluster.
"You're going to make it impossible for me to want to leave this bed," Felicity told Sara.
Sara giggled and leaned in again. "Mmm," she moaned happily as her lips met Felicity's. "Have you– ever– thought that–" Sara began in between short kisses. She gave Felicity another deep, slow kiss before drawing back and finishing, "–maybe that was my intention?"
Felicity smiled with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes as she grabbed Sara's wrists and rolled to straddle her girlfriend. "And was it?" she asked, bringing Sara's hands above her head and leaning down to kiss her.
Letting out a soft sound that seemed to be a half-sigh and half-moan, Sara chased Felicity's lips as the younger woman started pulling away. "Can't the rest of the world get on without us for one day?" she asked.
"Honey, Laurel and Oliver can't even get along without us for five minutes," Felicity pointed out. "The two of them, left alone in a room, with an entire arsenal of weapons? Somehow I don't picture that ending well for them or for us."
Sara's head dropped back into the pillow as she groaned. "Is it really too much to just want to spend all day in bed with my girlfriend?" she demanded in exasperation.
Felicity laughed at her, and lowered her body onto Sara's gently. "Want to? No. Expect to? Yes," she answered to Sara's entirely rhetorical question. She kissed the hollow of Sara's throat in a tantalizing way, her face spreading into a smile again at the goosebumps it caused to rise across her girlfriend's skin. "And need I remind you that you're the one who wanted to train Laurel against Oliver's wishes?"
"I thought he'd get on board with it once he saw how good she could be at defending herself!" Sara argued.
A funny noise erupted from Felicity as she tried to hold in her guffaw of laughter at the idea. "Yeah, well, last week when you got stuck at the club and Laurel went out with us? I saw Laurel throw a rock from twenty-five feet away and hit a sprinting gun-runner in the head to stop him from escaping," Felicity said. "If seeing that didn't change Oliver's mind, I don't know what will, because that was impressive."
Sara frowned a little at hearing Felicity gush about her older sister. "Should I be worried about you thinking you chose the wrong sister?" she asked suspiciously.
Felicity rolled her eyes at Sara and placed her lips firmly against the older girl's mouth. "Never," she told her adamantly, before beginning to get up out of bed.
The Canary sat up with a scowl on her face. "Whatever happened to making it impossible for you to leave our bed?" she demanded grumpily.
As Felicity reached the doorway, she looked back over her shoulder with an innocent expression. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did you not want to take a shower together this morning?" she asked. "Because if you want me to shower alone . . . all naked and steamy and . . wet . . . then" – she shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly – "I guess that I could do that."
"Don't you dare," Sara said in a low, seductive growl. In a single fluid motion, the athletic blonde was suddenly crouching on top of the covers. "Come here!" She lunged off the bed and Felicity took off toward the bathroom with Sara chasing after her.
They both stripped themselves bare of their pajamas and, as Sara captured Felicity with both her arms and her lips and pushed their joined bodies back into the hot spray of the showerhead, Felicity wondered at how this had become her life, waking up to a pair of gorgeous green eyes and having shower sex with Sara Lance every morning.
Stepping out of her car outside the new Queen Industries building that morning, Felicity looked across the parking lot of the steel mill to look at Verdant and smiled. She grabbed her tray of coffees from the cup holder in the center console, and smoothed the creases from her favorite gray pencil skirt, light blue blouse, and peep toe heels. Coincidentally, the clothes also happened to be Sara's favorites, on and off of Felicity, which was why the IT-girl was now running a little late. As she made her way into the new Queen Industries building, Felicity greeted the workers who had been renovating the old steel warehouse into their new offices for months now.
" 'Morning, Miss Smoak," the contractor, Charles, greeted her. "You're looking as pretty as ever."
"Good morning, Charles. I'm also still as in love with my girlfriend as ever, but 'A' for effort," she replied, pausing in the entryway. "Do you know if Oliver is in yet?"
"Can't blame a guy for tryin'." The curly-haired builder nodded his head. "Mr. Queen stepped in 'bout an hour ago. Last time I saw him, he was in his office. Should still be in there," Charles told her.
Felicity nodded her head in thanks and continued into the building. The construction workers had just smoothed down the floors and fixed the skylight in the reception area last week, and the early morning sun bounced off the polished and lacquered cement as if it were made of granite instead of concrete. The single-paned windows that separated the expansive space into individual offices gleamed, and from where she stood, Felicity could see that Oliver was in fact in his office sitting at his computer and making a face that indicated that he was doing actual legitimate work, but Felicity was most surprised to find Thea standing behind the reception desk.
"Hey," Felicity called, prompting Thea to perk her head up from whatever she was doing.
"Morning." Thea smiled, but, despite looking as well-dressed and coiffed as ever, Felicity could tell from the look in Thea's baby blue eyes that she was frazzled.
"What's wrong?" Felicity asked as she set her purse atop the desk.
Thea groaned. "The stupid club office printer isn't working and I needed the inventory paperwork, like, yesterday. Sin tried to fix it, but it didn't work out too well."
Felicity gave Thea a deadpan look. "She forgot to turn the machine off before she stuck her hand inside it again, didn't she?" the blonde guessed knowingly.
Thea tapped her nose and then pointed to Felicity in confirmation. "It took Roy and Sara to get her unstuck and now all three of them are covered in ink, as is the office floor, and the printer still isn't working," the youngest Queen griped. "So I am borrowing your printer."
"Here," Felicity told her, handing Thea a coffee from the carrier. "It was Oliver's but you look like you need it more than he does, and I know all you Queens take your coffee the same."
"Thank you," Thea told her as she accepted the cup.
"And I'll come by the club a little later to fix the printer, but you are more than welcome to use ours for the time being," she said.
The printer behind Thea began spitting out her paperwork and the younger girl quickly gathered the pages before turning back to Felicity. She walked around the reception desk so she and Felicity could stand on the same side. "Thank you, Fliss. Honestly, I don't know where this family would be without you," Thea told her as she tugged Felicity into a hug.
Felicity laughed as she put her hands on Thea's back and returned the hug. "I try my very hardest not to think about it," Felicity quipped.
Thea broke away. "Okay. Thank you. I love you. Now I have to go count my entire stock," she said as she began backing towards the door. As Thea was leaving, she passed Laurel on her way out, shouting out a quick, "Hi, Laur! Bye, Laur!" on her way out of the building.
Laurel looked from the place where Thea had disappeared, back to Felicity questioningly. Felicity shook her head and waved the silent question off as Laurel made her way further into the office, her shiny black pumps clicking on the floor with each step. As the older woman approached, Felicity took the second coffee out of the carrier and handed it wordlessly to Laurel. She noted the bags under Laurel's eyes and the lines creasing her face that made her seem much older than she actually was, but there was something glowing about the way she moved and carried herself. Laurel looked tired but happy.
"You are a rockstar, Felicity," Laurel told her emphatically as she accepted the coffee.
"That does seem to be the general consensus this morning," Felicity replied.
Laurel looked through the single-pane glass into Oliver's office. "How's our boy this morning?" she asked, taking note of the serious look on his face.
"Not sure," Felicity answered. "He was here when I got here. I haven't gotten a chance to check in on him yet."
There was an uneasy look on Laurel's face as she continued to watch their partner hard at work. "I haven't seen Ollie do this much paperwork since he was legally resurrected."
Felicity hesitated for a moment before asking, "Are you sure he should be signing those without your legal counsel?"
"He's been actually reading them very thoroughly lately," Laurel informed her matter-of-factly. She got a sly smile on her face as she added, "I guess inadvertently signing over his entire company and the Queen family fortune to a super villainness has made him a lot more careful."
"Well I would hope so," Felicity ground out.
Laurel hid a laugh behind her coffee cup. "Plus, I've been sorting all of our documents out into categories of 'safe to sign', 'questionable', and 'Oliver, for the love of God, do not sign this'."
Felicity let out a bout of earnest laughter and bumped shoulders with Laurel. "Very aptly labeled, counselor," she commended. Setting aside their usual playful banter, Felicity walked behind the reception desk and flipped through the desk calendar. "Speaking of which, Lance Legal Firm officially opens its doors next month."
"I still can't believe you managed to develop a private law firm as a subsidiary of Queen Industries," Laurel commented with amusement. "Providing legal counsel and representation to low income residents of The Glades? It's just like what I did at CNRI, what I've always wanted to do– helping the people who slip through the cracks. It's going to turn this place around, Felicity."
Felicity shrugged as if it were no big deal. "It's what we do. Masked vigilante crusaders by night, a multi-billion dollar industry of humanitarians and philanthropists by day." Felicity stared out the double doors of the building at the pristine sunshine outside. "We're going to change this city. The right way this time."
"Good God," Felicity swore under her breath, "what the hell did you guys do to this printer?" Of course, there was no one around to hear her, but that was all the same to Felicity.
She was elbow deep into the printer, shining a flashlight into the darkened depths of the machine while fiddling with wires and plates. Her face, neck, arms, and hands were covered in ink, toner, and tiny paper cuts, the kind that always seemed to hurt worse than a stab wound. When she had offered to fix the club's printer for Thea, she clearly hadn't known what she was getting herself into.
Felicity was so deeply engrossed in the printer and her own grumblings that she neither sensed nor heard someone approaching her from behind. In fact, she didn't have the slightest clue there was anyone in the stock room but her until she felt a pair of hands grab her butt. At one point in time, she may have jumped or shrieked, but as it were now, Felicity simply stilled for a moment before continuing her work.
"Whoever has their hands on my ass had better be my girlfriend, otherwise hands off," Felicity intoned sternly.
The pair of hands slid to Felicity's hips and she saw a curtain of blonde hair fall into her peripheral vision beside her before she felt a kiss on the exposed skin of her neck. "Whoever is putting their hands on your ass who isn't me is going to get their ass kicked," Sara said in a low growl.
Felicity smiled in spite of herself. "You know, sometimes I wonder if it's healthy how much I love it when you're possessive," she remarked offhandedly.
"Because it's totally one-sided," Sara replied sarcastically. "Like the other week when that guy was hitting on me at the bar and you sidled on over and kissed me in front of him and everyone else in the club?"
"I was just giving him a friendly heads-up that you already had someone," Felicity stated factually. "And you didn't seem to mind at the time. In fact, I distinctly remember you finding it very . . . attractive."
Sara wrapped her arms around the tech's waist and pulled her back from the printer. Felicity stood up and turned around. Sara went to her put arms around her girlfriend's neck and the younger woman took a half-step back. "Honey, I'm covered in ink," she protested halfheartedly.
"Well, so am I. And I don't care," Sara responded simply, pulling Felicity's body into hers. Her fingers tucked a few wayward tufts of Felicity's hair behind her ear as she looked at her with a soft smile. "You're still as attractive as ever. I couldn't keep my hands off you if I tried."
Felicity rolled her eyes at the cheeky grin Sara gave her. "Which clearly isn't the case," she noted, as she felt Sara's hands move to her hips again. "Not that I don't love the attention, but aren't you supposed to be working?"
Sara shrugged. "Thea and Roy are in the middle of an argument, Sin's attempting to mediate. I figure I have a few minutes before they realize I'm gone."
"And you chose to spend your precious free minutes with me," Felicity guessed.
"I needed my Felicity-fix," Sara explained simply, shrugging her shoulders.
Smiling like all was right in the world, Felicity leaned her forehead against Sara's head. She kissed her girlfriend briefly, holding Sara close to her. "I love you."
Being with a vigilante bartender did not come without its difficulties, but it was moments just like these, the little ones that to anyone else might seem insignificant, that motivated Felicity to find a way around every obstacle that arose. It was as though her very soul was tethered to Sara's through some preconceived bond that had always been meant to be, and she wouldn't rather have it any other way. Felicity had believed she had known true love before Sara, and maybe at one point she had, but what she felt in her heart for this woman was so much more vast than anything she had ever felt before, and if she'd thought she loved Sara six months ago, she was now certain of it beyond a shadow of a doubt. This was the woman she was meant to spend her forever with.
Felicity had never been a big believer of fate. She had never believed in a so-called "higher power" or "grand design". She believed that her own life was whatever she made it to be, and that if she wanted something, she had to make it happen for herself. This theory had held up for most of her life, until now. Until Sara. It seemed that fate had finally intervened in Felicity's life, bringing with it the one thing that could make up for being absent for so long, and that one thing came in the form of a strong and beautiful blonde-haired woman with eyes like sea glass and abs like a Michelangelo sculpture and a soul so complex and intricate that Felicity could spend the rest of her life discovering each and every facet of Sara Lance. They were so different, and yet they fit together so perfectly that Felicity was forced to believe that some "higher power" had created them to be so.
Sara's head rested more firmly against Felicity's own. "I love you too," she answered softly. "More than anything. Everything I am–"
"–and everything I ever will be," Felicity continued for her.
"–is yours," they spoke in unison as they ended the promise the way they always did.
It had become a regular thing in the last six months, repeating the words that Sara had first spoken to Felicity when she had finally declared her feelings. It was a promise that neither of them took lightly nor for granted, a promise they both meant from the bottoms of their hearts, and both of them knew it. This was their promise to each other: that their love was unconditional, irrevocable, and the one thing that they could be sure of above all else, that they belonged to each other and only each other and they always would, and that there would be no secrets or lies between them.
"Exactly," Sara said, smiling her silly, lovestruck smile.
After she had finally fixed Thea's printer (by some small miracle that led Felicity to believe there really was a God), and averted the young entrepreneur's imminent nervous breakdown, there was really nothing left for her to do. Oliver was up to his eyeballs in paperwork but he insisted that Felicity didn't need to bail him out this time; he would finish it himself and he would read everything, he had promised. Meanwhile, Laurel was going to go to an AA meeting and to fight with City Hall about their building and business permits, though not necessarily in that order.
It felt strange to Felicity to not have a whole list of things that needed her immediate attention. She had spent the last six months working in tandem with Oliver, Thea, and Laurel, meeting with builders and board members, strategizing with Water on video conference and going over numbers and heeding his financial advice. Every new obstacle that came up was just another new challenge for Felicity and she had become very good at handling unexpected issues with grace and poise. After having to rebuild an entire fortune five-hundred company – along with a delicate family legacy – while rounding up formerly-super powered rogue convicts, every problem seemed easily fixed.
It helped having Sara, Felicity thought. Sara had been her rock through everything. It was nice to have someone cut her off mid-rant with a passionate, reassuring kiss that immediately made Felicity's toes curl and all thoughts of whatever had been bothering her to become forgotten. Their relationship was far from perfect, but it was perfect to Felicity. Sara was perfect to Felicity, although Sara vehemently denied being anywhere close to perfect. Felicity loved her; she really, truly loved her more than anything else in the world, and she had long since come to a conclusion: Sara was the person Felicity wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
She wanted to marry Sara Lance, and she was more sure of this than she had ever been of anything before in her entire life.
Still, even as encompassed as she was by her blossoming career and relationship bliss, there was still that nagging thought in the back of Felicity's mind that kept her sneaking down to the foundry in secret to check her systems for any new activity with Dark Archer II or Checkmate. Everything had been suspiciously quiet on both fronts for far too long in Felicity's opinion, and she was determined not to let herself be lulled into a false sense of security. Both of these looming adversaries were well-known for attacking their stealth and efficiency. It was like watching a horror movie, hearing the music become ominous and suspenseful and knowing that something bad was going to happen but being no less scared by it when it did.
They hadn't hooded up for a few days. The SCPD had been remarkably on-point since Detective Lance had become the Chief of Police, and Team Arrow found themselves needing to get involved less and less. None of them were really sure of how content they were without having to don their hero personas each night, but Felicity knew that they shouldn't gripe about having to hang up their masks for awhile, as surely the next crisis was right around the corner. When Felicity had called Oliver earlier and he had told her that the office had been quiet and she didn't need to come back in right away, he had also asked her to check in on the lair, which had given her the perfect excuse to go down and check A.R.G.U.S.'s file for any sightings of Dark Archer II and Checkmate.
As soon as Felicity had slipped into the pantry and through the next set of doors after punching in the pass code, she got a bad feeling. She scoffed at herself. She was freaking herself out over nothing. Her senses always kicked into overdrive whenever she entered the foundry alone, but the hairs rising on the back of her neck were new, and she wondered what made this time any different from the hundreds of other times she'd gone into their headquarters by herself. It was unquestionable that her sometimes over-active imagination got the best of her, but Felicity was usually able to self-talk herself back into a state of calm.
No sooner had she neared the bottom of the stairs and appeared around the doorway into the lair, then she realized why her feeling of impending doom was not so easily shaken today. Felicity didn't even have time to scream in alarm at the sight of the dark hooded intruder or even lift a hand in useless defense before the dark cloaked figure aimed and fired an arrow that cut through the air with a sickening whistle and tore through Felicity's chest. By the time she managed to catch her breath enough to scream out in pain, the dark archer had already disappeared down through the floor grate and into the tunnels that laid below the foundry. Felicity felt as if she had just been the victim of a hit-and-run accident, not sure if what had just taken plan had actually happened or if she had simply dreamt up the whole scene. If not for the searing pain and the fletchings of the arrow protruding from her chest servings as tangible proof, Felicity might have chalked it up to her over-active imagination.
With the arm that she could still feel and move, Felicity took out her cell phone and pressed the number four on her speed dial. For two solid rings, Felicity prayed that her call would be answered and her prayers were answered when, on the third ring, the call connected and a deep voice spoke.
"Felicity, is everything okay?"
"Digg," Felicity ground out, trying hard not to sound like she was in as much pain as she was, "we . . . might have a slight problem," she said nonchalantly.
"How 'slight'?" Digg asked suspiciously.
Felicity looked down at the predicament she had found herself in. "Well . . ." she began slowly.
She sure that this was not exactly going to be the most pleasant conversation she and Diggle had ever had in the course of their friendship.
So there you have it.