IV.

When the sun sets after Sara's coffee plans with Laurel, she finds herself suffused with a feeling that is remarkably light and incredibly foreign.

The giddiness in her stomach necessitates some form of outlet, so Sara finds one.

She suits up and patrols and smashes in the face of a 20-something kid who seems to experience some trouble removing his hands from the teenaged girl he'd dragged into the alley five minutes before Sara had spotted him.

When she has sufficiently disabled him, Sara binds his hands and comforts the girl all the way up until the SCPD sirens send her back into the shadows and atop the roof of the neighboring warehouse.

Sara was already in a good mood, but now she is feeling successful and helpful and like she is actually, maybe making some kind of difference, here in Starling. And Sara really wants to share in that feeling with someone else.

It does not surprise Sara that the first person she thinks of is Felicity Smoak, but still, she is surprised to find herself holding two bags of Chinese takeout just outside Felicity's apartment half an hour later.

Because there are many things that Sara wants, but few things in which she will allow herself to indulge. Sara is not altogether sure that 'indulging' in Felicity Smoak is a good idea, just yet, but if nothing else, she decides as she raises her fist to rap her knuckles against the door, Felicity certainly is a weakness for Sara.

A weakness which Sara can allow herself to succumb to, at least for tonight.

Sara perhaps should have spared a bit more thought to her plan, however, because when Felicity opens the door, it is clear to Sara that she had been in bed. Felicity's hair is tied up in a ponytail that has been loosened by sleep, so that small strands of blonde hang around her face and tickle against her ears; her eyes are squinted and tired, and a weary palm rises beneath her glasses to rub against them even as Felicity's brows furrow in confusion.

"Am I dreaming? Because I don't feel like I'm dreaming, but this is the sort of visit I'd really only expect in a dream. Not that I was expecting you, because, clearly," Felicity frowns and gestures down the length of her torso, indicating a pair of light grey sleep pants and a soft cotton t-shirt in pink that is just a bit too small and doesn't quite reach the line of her waist, exposing a strip of bare flesh to Sara's appreciative gaze, "I was definitely not expecting you, but… well, you know what I mean."

"I'm sorry," Sara smiles ruefully, even as her shoulders hunch forward slightly in self-disappointment. "I forgot that normal people use nights for practical things, like sleeping," she chuckles, shaking her head slightly. "I'll go."

Felicity frowns, her hand darting out swiftly to grasp Sara's forearm lightly as she shakes her head. "You don't have to," she tries softly. "I mean, I'm awake now, right?" She asks rhetorically, eyes soft and pleading for something that Sara simply cannot comprehend.

"No, really," Sara insists. "You were in bed. It was rude of me to come here so late. I'm sorry, Felicity."

"Sara," Felicity sighs softly as Sara shifts a little to move away from the door, "please stay," she whispers.

It is not the words which make Sara turn around – although, the request for Sara's continued company is flattering in a way that Sara hasn't experienced in a long time. Still, it is not the words which stop her; it is the tone.

It is the tiny crack in Felicity's hardly-there voice, and the aching desperation not to be left alone, and Sara immediately wonders where this fear of being abandoned even stems from. She wonders how she could possibly have stirred that fear to the surface by trying to allow Felicity the luxury of sleep after her blatant interruption.

Still, the tone indicates to Sara that she would do more harm by leaving than by staying, and although she now feels mildly awkward and a bit shameful for having disturbed Felicity's rest, she has no intention of causing Felicity harm in any form, if it can be helped.

So Sara softly murmurs, "Are you sure?"

Felicity smiles brightly and nods, gently tugging at Sara's arm, still clutched within her fingers. "Please?" She appeals again, meeting Sara's eyes with her own.

Sara doesn't think that she could deny the request even if she wanted to, but whatever hope she might've had for doing so is shot right out the proverbial window once eye contact is made.

There is warmth in Felicity's eyes; a welcoming, affectionate thing which makes Sara just feel in ways that she had never quite been able to with Nyssa.

Because Nyssa – for all of her passionately devoted love – was rarely affectionate with Sara; not like this, anyway. For Nyssa would touch, and cherish, and kiss, and drown Sara in feelings that often felt entirely too overwhelming, but this innocent giving of emotion is new to her.

There is no promise in Felicity's gaze but a promise to care and support. With Nyssa, it had been a promise of tension relief, whenever their eyes had met; it had been a promise that Nyssa would make her feel better once their backs hit the sheets and Nyssa's hands would scorch her flesh.

But Felicity is not Nyssa.

Felicity's gaze does not promise a searing touch or an orgasmic relief. Felicity promises only her company and invested feelings.

It is strange that Sara is not deterred by this, because a year ago – hell, even a few months ago – Sara would wonder if this indicated a lack of interest on Felicity's part.

But Sara knows better, because Felicity is honest and kind and cannot keep her feelings secret.

With that knowledge, Sara feels… content in this promise that Felicity is making. There is no pressure from Felicity for anything that Sara is not ready for; Felicity wants only to spend more time with her.

And whatever else Sara may be feeling, Sara shares that desire with her.

It is nice that there are no expectations of what must happen if Sara crosses the threshold, and the lack of them is, perhaps, what motivates Sara to concede.

Sara nods. "Okay," she says.

"Really?" Felicity beams. "I mean, yeah. Okay. Good. Come in," she instructs, words nearly blurring together in her haste to spit them out as she widens the door and pulls Sara through.

Sara chuckles and shakes her head, but follows Felicity into a cozy-looking living room. There is a couch, a loveseat, a 46" television mounted to the wall, a cabinet which houses some innumerable number of DVDs, and several framed pictures on the walls with aerial views of Paris, New York, and Rome.

It does not escape Sara's notice that there are no pictures of Felicity's family or friends, here. Sara wonders if Felicity's desk at work is where those more personal pictures can be found, but somehow Sara doubts it.

Sara honestly doubts that such pictures exist, and it devastates her.

Because even stranded at sea, even stranded on the Amazo, and even isolated as she was in The League, Sara had always carried a picture of her mother, father, and sister. Sara wonders if Felicity truly feels that she has no one, and if that is the case, Sara will find a way to be her someone.

Felicity deserves someone.

"Okay, I really don't mean to rush you, but that smells… wow, really good. What did you bring? And how did you even find a place open this late? It's three in the morning," Felicity huffs out a laugh.

Sara ambles idly behind her as Felicity disappears to the kitchen, and when Sara meets her, she smiles warmly and sets the bags on the counter, next to the plates Felicity has pulled from the cupboards.

"Chinese," Sara tells her. "I have a guy."

"Do you have a Thai guy?" Felicity cants her head slightly to the right, even as her hands busy themselves with helping Sara to open the small cartons of food. "The rhyme was unintended," she announces, hands stilling briefly as the connection is made that, yes, she had rhymed her words, and Sara grins. "I mostly only ask because Dig always gets these crazy cravings for Thai food after he and Oliver come back from a mission, and it might be okay to surprise him every now and then. Just, usually it's too late at night for me to find anywhere, and sometimes I think they deserve a surprise, so – "

"I have a Thai guy," Sara chuckles.

It is not that she wants to interrupt Felicity, because she does not; in fact, Sara enjoys that whenever she feels incapable of talking, or even just unwilling to do so, Felicity can always fill the empty space between them.

It is only an upside that Felicity can manage to be so adorable while doing it.

Still, Sara is startlingly aware of how babbling can make Felicity feel uncomfortable, at times. Sara doesn't necessarily agree that it should, because Felicity rarely makes herself out to be the fool that she believes, but Sara tries to interrupt as soon as she notices that Felicity's cheeks are brightening with color.

Sara likes to believe that she is, in an admittedly small way, still protecting Felicity – even if it is only from her own personal overshares.

"Mm," Felicity hums as she pulls a fork from her mouth that had, moments before, been coated in sweet and sour sauce from a piece of chicken that she had doled onto her plate. "God, that's good."

"My guy's the best one in town," Sara says teasingly, tearing open a packet of chopsticks and setting them across her plate.

"Oh," Felicity frowns in realization. "Do you want a drink? I have milk. And water. And tea. I know you like tea. There's a bottle of red, if you want. Or I think I might have a can of Sprite around here, somewhere? Sorry," Felicity smiles weakly. "I really don't have people over very often."

Sara refuses to allow her instantaneous sadness to become visible, because she truly is having a good time, and she wants Felicity to have the same, but it confirms what Sara had suspected before.

Felicity does not have friends outside of Team Arrow; not really. And while Dig seems to be a stand-up guy who considers the feelings of others whenever possible, Oliver is more self-absorbed than that.

Oliver is a good guy, too – Sara will never dispute that – but he is driven, and focused on his crusade. His priorities lie in managing his day life and his night life, and often he spares little thought for anything (or, in this case, anyone) else.

He will protect Felicity with all that he has, and everyone on the team knows it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is a good friend to Felicity. Because he really sort of isn't, as much as Sara hates to realize it.

It is unfair that Felicity has given her career and her night life and even pieces of her heart to Oliver Queen when he makes so little effort to return such kindnesses.

Sara has to regroup quickly when she notices Felicity's anxious look, and before the IT specialist can begin her embarrassed rambling, Sara announces, "Milk. Definitely milk."

"My mom always told me it was weird to have milk with dinner," Felicity says, retrieving a couple of glasses from another cabinet closer to the refrigerator.

"Well, it's three in the morning," Sara shrugs. "Technically, this could be breakfast."

"I'm pretty sure that my mom would also have something to say about having Chinese for breakfast," Felicity counters. "Something that would probably sound like, 'don't'. Or more probably, 'Who the hell eats Chinese for breakfast, anyway?'"

Sara hesitates before asking – because she is curious, yes, and has been since the night Felicity was shot and mentioned her mother in passing, but she has no desire to ask if it will put a stop to this easy conversation and playfulness between them.

Still, she wants to know and is feeling brave, and Felicity was the one to bring her mother up in the first place, so Sara steps out on a limb.

"Your mom… You said she was gone a lot?" She leads gently.

Felicity stiffens so abruptly that Sara immediately regrets asking, but Felicity does not shy away from offering an answer.

"It was just me and my mom. She worked a lot. It wasn't her fault. She just…" Felicity sighs and offers Sara a freshly poured glass of milk, which Sara accepts with a comforting brush of her fingers against Felicity's. Felicity smiles a little at their touching hands before she withdraws. "She always thought I needed things that I didn't want, and wasn't really around to give me the things I did want."

"Her time?" Sara guesses, proffering the words with a gentle understanding as she trails behind Felicity back toward the couch, where they set their dishware on the coffee table before them.

Felicity looks over at her.

It is a heavy look, brimming with intensity, and normally Sara might feel panic. But she doesn't. Because the intensity in Felicity's eyes is calculating, and like she is determining if Sara can be trusted – and there is very little that Sara would do to breach Felicity's trust, if given another option.

So Sara steadily meets Felicity's gaze with her own, and allows all of her feelings (both verbalized and unspoken) to bleed through her eyes.

Sara feels vulnerable, yes – because although she is not doing so with words, she is exposing everything to Felicity Smoak in this moment. But Felicity needs it, and Sara thinks that maybe she might need it, too.

There is no one in Starling City who Sara can be this honest with. No one but Felicity.

There has been no one but Felicity to trust with this sort of honesty since before the Gambit – and then, trust had not been so important to Sara. There had been less to trust others with. Now, Sara understands that trusting the wrong people can not only get you hurt, emotionally, but can literally get you killed.

Sara knows, though, that she can trust Felicity.

And, evidently, Felicity understands that she can trust Sara.

"Her time," Felicity confesses on a sigh. "Her attention. I don't know," she shrugs. "We were always different, and she always had a hard time understanding me – which isn't really her fault, I guess. I was a difficult kid. Most children with high IQs tend to have a strained social life, and I failed a couple of my elementary years because of it. Well, that, and I was absurdly bored with the material. She… did the best she could, I think, but we aren't close. Or, not as close as we could be. It's fine. We're too different, anyway, and most of the time, I think she's… Well, not irritating, because she's my mom. But, if she wasn't my mom, that would probably be the right word. "

Sara mulls over this for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on a bite of chicken fried rice, before she decides that the only appropriate way to counter this huge leap of trust from Felicity is with one of her own.

"I was always closer to my mom than my dad. I was a little too reckless for him, I think," Sara shuffles a foot underneath her and shifts her plate in her lap so that she can face Felicity a little better. "It was just never… easy for me to talk to him. I was a teenager, and one without much of a plan for my life. Laurel always had plans," Sara smiles down at her own lap. "Laurel always wanted to be just like him. She strayed a little from her idea to be a cop when we were kids," she laughs softly, "but being a lawyer is still some form of serving justice. I wanted to be a doctor," she snorts at herself, maneuvering her chopsticks to lift a noodle into her mouth.

"You didn't stray far, either," Felicity shrugs, watching Sara's easy manipulation of the thin wooden sticks.

Sara imagines that Felicity probably can't use chopsticks, and wonders if one of these days, maybe she could show her.

Then Felicity's words sink in, and Sara frowns her bemusement. "How do you mean?"

"Well," Felicity furrows her brows and turns to regard Sara with matching confusion, as though she doesn't quite grasp how Sara can't understand, "doctors save people. So do you. I mean, it's different; obviously it's different," Felicity rolls her eyes at herself, "and I know that- I know that you did some bad stuff before you got back to Starling… But you save people, now, Sara. And half the people in this city wouldn't even make it to a doctor without you and Oliver to help. So maybe… maybe stop thinking of yourself as such a disappointment?" Felicity fumbles nervously with her fork and flickers her eyes to peek at Sara's reaction.

But Sara isn't sure that she can form one.

She is shell-shocked by Felicity's evaluation of her, and she doesn't quite know how to react.

Because it is sweet of Felicity to say, yes, but she does not believe that Felicity is right. Sara has done so many things that would not only have been disappointing to her family, were they ever to find out, but that were disappointing even to Sara herself.

Sara does not believe that she is a good person. So Sara tells her that.

"I've… done some really- terrible things, Felicity," she bows her head shamefully.

"That doesn't mean you aren't doing good things now," Felicity huffs. "Okay," she says when she detects Sara's skeptical frown, "if a kid steals a cookie, he's broken the rules, right? But that doesn't make him a bad kid forever. It means he gets in trouble and has to deal with the consequences, and hopefully he learns not to do it again. So… you got yourself into some trouble with The League of Terrifying Assassins," Sara laughs at this, despite herself, and Felicity grins at her response, "and now you're dealing with the consequences. You're not a bad person forever, Sara. You're just a kid who stole a cookie."

Sara is, in fact, a woman who, for many years, stole lives – but she understands Felicity's thinking. She still isn't sure that she believes it, but, if nothing else, Felicity's faith and unwavering support makes Sara feel that redemption is maybe something achievable.

Sara doesn't know that she will ever counter her awful deeds with enough good ones, but she will try. For all the lives that Sara has taken, she hopes to restore more; it may not make her feel better, but she could still help someone else.

Felicity seems to realize that Sara needs a moment, so the IT girl maintains silence for as long as Sara thinks she is capable of.

When she speaks, it is such a relief that Sara bursts into laughter in spite of her whirling feelings.

"Now I really want a cookie," Felicity muses thoughtfully.

Still laughing delightedly at Felicity's unwitting charm, Sara reaches into her pocket and tosses a fortune cookie across the couch.

"And you didn't even steal it," Felicity jests playfully.

"You wouldn't know if I did," Sara counters on the ends of a chuckle.

"Probably true, but then I have plausible deniability, so it doesn't affect me either way," Felicity shrugs, munching happily on her cookie.

"You didn't read the fortune," Sara notices.

"I don't trust a cookie to tell me about my future," Felicity laughs. "I trust it to make my taste buds happy. And it does. So I'm never disappointed."

Sara wonders if this is Felicity's perception of life; never expect more from anyone than they are willing to offer, so that you cannot be let down.

It is a safe way to live, if not a bit sad – but Sara makes it clear that she is working to offer more.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"What… for?" Felicity ventures to ask, though hesitation pauses her fork midway to her mouth as she warily eyes Sara for a response.

"Talking with me," Sara smiles warmly and reaches out to lightly squeeze Felicity's thigh beneath her palm. "Being here. Keeping your word. It means a lot."

"Yeah," Felicity accepts on a whisper. "I mean, of course. I care about you," she murmurs. "You're important to me. I know I can't help much with what you do at night, or with anything, maybe – but I'm always here, Sara."

"I know," Sara says, her voice cracking with emotion as she finally releases Felicity's leg and smiles tearfully in the other blonde's direction.

It's just that Felicity really makes Sara feel like she can be… normal. Like it honestly does not matter what Sara has done in her past so long as she feels remorse for it. Felicity makes Sara feel hope and tenderness and a desire to be better.

And Sara promises herself that she will be better. For Felicity, she will be better.


Author's Note: Please review, if you're still reading. I'm not sure how interested you guys are, or if I've skewed the characters too far from their canon-selves. Let me know.