#arrowfic

The hospital corridor’s mostly empty when Ava steps through, just a small crowd huddled together at the end. She recognizes faces and information, can’t even bring herself to blink at the sight of Laurel Lance, and beelines directly for Sara who hasn’t looked up, is staring at the wall, mouth tight and eyes wet, grief blanketed across her shoulders.

Ava’s not surprised that Sara recognizes her footsteps, is just glad when she turns and all but throws herself into Ava’s ready arms, emotions filing over her face at a speed too quick to assess and making Ava want to punch something.

“Oh, Captain,” she breathes against Sara’s hair, and Sara’s sob is muffled in Ava’s shirt. Ava holds her for a long moment, feels her own heart breaking, and wonders at how Sara can still be the strongest and brightest women she’s ever known when life keeps battering her over and over again.

(She wonders if the Ava’s before her ever felt this, if they’d looked at the sun and known they’d do anything to keep her burning.)

“What do you need?” Ava asks, and Sara’s sharp glance makes it clear she knows it’s not a placation. It’s a dangerous statement — a promise — but in this moment Ava would willingly tear apart time itself just to see Sara smile.

(How many Ava’s before her were deprogrammed for feeling too much?)

“I want to go home,” Sara says after a long moment, and the determination in her eyes is one of the bravest things Ava’s ever seen.

“I can drive you there,” one of the men says — John Diggle, the vigilante Spartan, A.R.G.U.S. Agent, husband of Director Michaels, father of John Diggle Jr., cohort of vigilante Oliver Queen — but Sara shakes her head, fingers still gripped tight in the back of Ava’s blazer.

“No,” she says, “I don’t mean…I don’t mean Dad’s place. Thank you, Diggle, but right now I need to be home. I won’t leave, I just—”

Diggle nods even though he’s obviously confused, but Ava understands. It’s also a glaring sign of her emotional state that Sara hasn’t seemed to notice Ray and Nate peeking around the corner at the end of the hall, expressions grave, and Nate’s grip on Ray’s shoulder probably the only thing stopping Ray from barrelling away and sweeping Sara into his arms.

Ava’s proud of their resolve.

“I don’t think you’ll have to go far,” she says, tilting her head, and Sara’s laugh is wet and sad but something.

Sara gives her teammates something as close to a smile as she can manage, and Ava’s proved right when Ray’s tripping over his own feet and wrapping Sara in a tight hug, Ava included by proxy. Nate hovers just behind, reaching out to grip one of Sara’s hands tightly, obviously wanting in on the comfort but not wanting to overwhelm, a surprising amount of forethought for someone who’s modus operandi is almost entirely physical.

“We weren’t sure we should follow,” Ray says, “but we didn’t want you to be alone.”

“Gary told us what happened, after Ava left the bureau,” Nate adds, and Ava promises to offer Gary a rare ‘well done’ when she next sees him.

“The ship’s just outside,” Ray says. “Shall I ask Gideon to find us somewhere to park up?”

Sara nods, taking a deep breath, eyes fixed on the ceiling for a moment as she pulls herself together. Ava wants to tell her she doesn’t have to, that her team won’t expect her to, that Ava doesn’t expect her to, but she understand Sara Lance well enough to know that it’s for Sara, not for them.

“Laurel,” Sara says, and the line between her eyes says the words feel strange on her tongue, “we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

Laurel — whoever this Laurel is — nods, and Ava really hopes she’s not an anachronism, for Sara’s sake.

“I’ll go get started on dinner,” Ray says, begrudgingly stepping away, and Nate throws his thumb over his shoulder in the direction Ray’s purposefully marching.

“I’ll go make sure he doesn’t use all the groceries in overdoing it,” he says, giving Sara a soft smile. He presses the palm of his hand briefly between Ava’s shoulder blades, solidarity and friendship and team, and Ava thinks, not for the first time, how strange and naive and special these people are, letting their hearts drive them and giving their friendship out so easily.

“Tomorrow,” Diggle says when Sara turns to offer her goodbyes, finally stepping out of Ava’s embrace. Diggle’s eyes flicker between them, but he doesn’t say anything, and Ava gets the impression he knows how to mind his own business, a trait she greatly appreciates and scarcely finds now she’s found her lot thrown in with Sara’s crew.

“Tomorrow,” Sara says, a promise not to run for them all to hear.

She takes Ava’s hand, tangling their fingers together, and Ava tugs her close against her side, pressing a chaste kiss against her temple, wishing she could kiss all of her until the grief’s washed away and knowing all she can really do is follow Sara’s lead.

(She wonders if any other Ava has ever felt helpless; if it was in their programming at all or if she’s been flawed from the start.)

“Love you,” Ava says, little more than a whisper against Sara’s hair, and Sara’s fingers tighten around hers, breath a shaky rush.

“Love you, too,” she says. “Thank you. For coming.”

Ava pulls them to a halt, thinks about the span of time and space, of anachronisms and duty and tears in the very fabric of the universe (thinks about this incredible woman’s strength in the face of endless grief), and can’t stop herself from brushing a gentle kiss over Sara’s broken smile.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she says and means it.

(She wonders if another Ava has ever loved somebody like this.

She hopes so.

Before anyone else can react exactly what Oliver wanted to avoid starts rolling into motion. “DAD!” William’s scream is piercing, and I look up in time to see Oliver’s hooded form freefalling for another second before grabbing onto the rope, favoring the side of his body where the Kevlar is exposed under shredded cloth. The asshole of the week narrows a calculated glare at us.

Son of a bitch! I practically drag him as he tries to stay rooted to the spot, “Move!”

“Who is this young man calling the Green Arrow, ‘Dad’?” Of course the press wouldn’t miss that, would they. I hit at the camera shoved into our faces, pulling him tighter.

“Keep your face covered, don’t say anything to them. You have to move now!” I can feel his shoulders shaking and weaving us past more of those stupid vultures  I dip my head down and whisper into his ear, “He’s fine, he caught the rope, you’ll see him in a couple hours. I swear it to you, but we have to get out of here so he can stop worrying about us as much as we worry about him and focus on what he’s doing.” My concern is split between the man who I know can take care of himself and the young man who is rightly terrified that he’s going to lose another parent.

“Felicity Smoak, is this your son?” I don’t answer, just shed my coat so William can drape it over himself as I demand. “Is he the Green Arrow’s child as he claims? What’s your name son?”

A service elevator is two doorframes and forty feet in front of, if the design of this place makes any sense, us as they follow. “Get the button.” He dashes ahead and presses, clicking sounds like a gamer reach back here while I block the press from following us with the door.

A chime, “It’s here!”

“Where should we go?” I demand into the earpiece.

“Up!” “Down!”

Come on guys! “Someone give us an escape!”

“Go up, you can go two buildings over on the scaffolding then the van will be around the corner.”

I knock over a cart as I dash into the elevator cab, William is frantic at the close door option, with the addition of my one press of the top floor button. The camera guys trip but one reporter almost makes it, the doors barely sealing before he can get in.

“Dam-!“ Wait, young ears! “Darn it!” My attempt at recovering is weak.

His hair, grown shaggy in the past couple months hangs down over his eyes as he stares at the floor, “I’m sorry.” There are tear tracks down his cheeks.

“Oh, no, no-no-no, not you! You’re doing great, we just need to get away from here before anyone catches up.” We make it across and down, though I have to ditch the heels after they catch in the metal grating and I don’t have time to focus on being careful.

True to form, Oliver shows back at the new, spare, Arrow Cave an hour later, bruised but relatively unharmed. He strides in fast, looking around. “William?!” We all point in the same direction and he is met halfway there in a crushing hug. “Are you hurt?” He already knows the answer, having been on the comms with us as soon as he had a chance and then after getting the necessities out of the way spending the whole his ride back here on the line with William.

The kid just shakes his head, the muffled response not intended for us, nor are the reassurances Oliver gives.

We are going to have a problem though. A big problem. The feed was live, and already it’s taking off on social media. Now there’s speculation that not only is he Son of the Green Arrow, but they’re also taking my proximity and defensiveness to be that I, accurately, am helping the Green Arrow, and just as worrying, though inaccurate and offensive, that he is the Bastard Love Child of Felicity Smoak and the Green Arrow. The dedicated have even started trying to mock up what “his father” would look like based on the blurry image they got of him, removing my features and combining them with the few questionable captures of Oliver’s masked and hooded face. They’ve already tried combining my face with Oliver, and Ray, trying to see if either of those match. They don’t. Thankfully.

I can see from the building feed that they’re already circling my building and my home, just waiting for the possibility that I might return there tonight. “No Mom. Mom, no. No! That is a terrible idea.” I roll my eyes at the ceiling, tempted to hang up and blame the connection. “You think they won’t be showing up at your doorstep next?” She doesn’t listen, just continues to try and convince me to bring William out to visit her, or let her fly in. Thank all the secrets in the world that she doesn’t know that at this point he’s my son…step-son…family. He doesn’t either so I can’t quite figure out how to refer to him in my mind without mixing it up because we’ve never talked about what he would want me to call him. He just lost his mother, he doesn’t need to think of me as the person swooping in to steal that position in his life, he’s having a hard enough time finding out Oliver is his hero.