Sara Lance { is the steady hand & beating heart } (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strongerthanyouknow) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
time_fragment_main2018-01-13 03:43 pm
strongerthanyouknow) wrote in time_fragment_main2018-01-13 03:43 pm
Entry tags:
{ We stand shoulder to shoulder
Who: Sara Lance + Oliver/Legends/Team Arrow
What: Checking Out Her Stand-In
When: Shortly After Oliver Offered
Where Arrow Cave, underneath Verdant
Warning: ... all the normal ones for Sara Lance?
She's already told her people: where she's going and where their backup base of operations is (with Oliver, in the Arrow Cave) until Gideon is fixed from the newest shade of broken she's in. That's normal enough. One or two people in the know of where she's going, how to find her, if the world goes sideways in this place and she's needed at a moments notice.
There's something to being back in here.
Here, instead of where she belongs.
The second time in less than a year when that's true, that she doesn't have the Waverider and feels an adriftness from it she hates. Even if it's buried deep under the speculative look she's giving the room. Still, there's the unwrinkled constancy of Oliver and her team are with her this time. Comfort as much as it was extra weight to figure her -- and their -- way out of this as soon as possible.
[ OOT: Thread Original Here. All threads welcome to be continued and added to. ]
What: Checking Out Her Stand-In
When: Shortly After Oliver Offered
Where Arrow Cave, underneath Verdant
Warning: ... all the normal ones for Sara Lance?
She's already told her people: where she's going and where their backup base of operations is (with Oliver, in the Arrow Cave) until Gideon is fixed from the newest shade of broken she's in. That's normal enough. One or two people in the know of where she's going, how to find her, if the world goes sideways in this place and she's needed at a moments notice.
There's something to being back in here.
Here, instead of where she belongs.
The second time in less than a year when that's true, that she doesn't have the Waverider and feels an adriftness from it she hates. Even if it's buried deep under the speculative look she's giving the room. Still, there's the unwrinkled constancy of Oliver and her team are with her this time. Comfort as much as it was extra weight to figure her -- and their -- way out of this as soon as possible.
[ OOT: Thread Original Here. All threads welcome to be continued and added to. ]
no subject
Never mind the truth behind it.
Because it all started with them. Surviving hell and beyond to turn it into something right and good and pure. To take blood and darkness and use it for the light.
The reassurance is what he needs more than anything.
Strength. A promise that is unshakeable at it's core. If Sara comes back, he can persevere. He can go on.
And had it been earlier in their lives, he'd have stolen a kiss, needing the reassurance of touch and skin.
But he settles for resting his forehead on hers. Breathing.
"Good. That's.. that's good."
"Because I can't do this without you. Without knowing you're out there. Protecting time. Everything."
no subject
Spider webs whatever shards haven't absolutely shattered.
Trembles in a threat, that isn't a threat, it's a promise,
it's the last second before it snaps, trying to hold in place.
As those words can be felt on her skin, and she knows this isn't. He isn't. There are. She said. She broke. There are other people. Other places. He is. Will go. Hasn't been. But it's already written. And he's still here. Holding on to her. His eyes closed, and so close. So close she can watch the way his eyelashes shiver and how the muscles in his face tighten and release in the fight inside of him that she knows so well. As though he were fighting it in her head. Her heart. Her skin. Her veins. Don't fall. Don't fall. Never fall. It's not an option.
She doesn't think she can do this. She already broke the cardinal rule of everything.
She's never been great at this slope. She never had to be. None of them mattered.
"Always." She doesn't even know where that whisper comes from. An answer.
A confession. A promise. Given a hundred times. In a look. In being right at his side in a fight. In going to Star and not India. There. And there. And here. She doesn't know if it is to the right question. To what he said. How to look away. How to breathe. She's never been able to. She couldn't even when she found him last. When everyone had left him, let him die, and time was going to be rewritten by her, and the Legends, anyway. And she'd still had to. Make it better. Make him see that she never would, say no, back down, leave him without the light, the truth she knew about him deeper than time, or blood, or ruin, or right.
That it's the only answer that ever was and is and will.
It's all of it, all of it is only and ever been -- "Always."
no subject
It isn't right.
Oliver should be stronger than this. He should be able to bear up under this weight as much as any other.
Sara. Tommy. Shado. Yao Fei. Laurel.
His mind keeps tripping over it. A stutter. A stammer. He can't get past this. Can't.
Sure and steady fingers cupping his head, drawing him in. A breath whispering against his skin. A vow. A certainty and Oliver's hands curl against her. Clinging. For just this one moment as he closes his eyes and struggles against himself.
"I can't do this. Not alone. Not.. not without you."
Finally his eyes open.
"I have to know that you're out there. Protecting time." Somewhere out there bright and shining. A guardian of time itself. Doing what was right. "That you come back."
no subject
That something in him needs her. To be here. Alive. In time. With him. Keep him from falling apart entirely. Her. Which is why any direction, any step would be better. Smarter. Saner. But there's Oliver and there's a table she's already more than mostly forgetting biting into her back through the layer of her shirt. Because something like a minute ago that seemed wise, that seemed sensible. Something to have behind her. To hold her, holding him. And now it's her self-imposed lack of an exit.
"I come back." She makes herself say, makes herself find words, find sound, even as it's failing her, even as none of it good enough for the things that have no words to be spoken. That haven't. In. What. In how long. Four years. Six. That an ocean of blood, and brutal fight with the light, can't cure entirely. Not ever. "I leave, but I come back. I always come back."
She does leave and she doesn't, she has left and she never can, and that, that is the truth that turns time, burns through it, underneath it, and that's the reason she does it. The thing she shouldn't even more but it's breaking like a wave without a place to run, and she doesn't run. Sara Lance doesn't run. Hasn't in so long. There are a hundred reasons why she shouldn't burning in the shards, like there always have been, every single time. But none of them are this.
This broken thing she set on fire in his eyes, and none of them are the thing that never,
never leaves even while making room for all the world, and all of time, and all of everyone else.
"Shh." It's soft. So soft. She doesn't know if it's an apology when her thumb brushes through his hair and she almost shakes her head and finds she can't move even that far. Not away. It could be. An apology. For this, and that, and for everything. Everything she can never apologize for, and never let go of, even if she never stays, and she leaves to come back to leave again. But she says it, and she does the only thing she can't stop herself from doing any more.
"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." Sara pushes up, just a little, tips her head just the barest little left between words and sound and breath, kissing him lightly, remembering only as it happens that last time he kissed her for the first time, again, she'd been crying, too.
no subject
The way his mind keeps tripping over things. Dead bodies. Loss. Grief. The unceasing demand to be better. Do better. To stop being forced to bury friends and loved ones.
He can't help them here. Trapped. Trapped in a place where time doesn't make sense. Trapped and unable to fight back.
Too much.
It's all too much and while he isn't sure how much more he can take, he knows that he has to. Keep taking it. Be strong. Help the others first.
Then her hands, small and warm and so very steady, shift. A whisper of her thumb in his hair. A soft hush on her lips.
The final crack in the dam and when she kisses him so softly absolutely everything in Oliver Queen shatters apart. Breaks.
No wall can last forever and he clutches at her with a sound that's almost a sob before his lips find hers in a desperate, frantic kiss.
Everyone leaves him.
Everyone.
But not Sara. Not her.
no subject
A shunt of somewhere to throw everything in him behind that sound at.
Rushed and hard, frantic with desperation, and grief. Her, and Laurel, and this place.
Things that she knows, that are all falling from her in seconds, because nothing is staying.
Nothing but the way everything gives, the way she would give anything, everything, he needs if he needs it from her. Light. Hope. Faith. Grief. Desperation. Defeat. Fingers digging into against skin and hair, and dragging him into her, and that goddamn unmoving table, kissing him back, as though none of this had come close enough, become too dangerous, gone too far already.
no subject
It's. Not.
Oliver would rather know than continue to operate in uncertainty. Not knowing what his future holds. To have something concrete, no matter how devastating, matters.
He will one day fail Laurel.
He will fail Sara.
But Sara will never fail him. She will always be there and he pours his grief and guilt and relief into every kiss, every clash of lips and teeth and tongue. Fingers tight enough to leave bruises, but he can't care.
Sara.
All that matters is Sara.
He couldn't manage this without her.
no subject
or this kiss that threatens to split lips and knock teeth.
Nothing that he could throw at her, beyond the edge of a cliff could surprise or frighten her entirely. That's not the only problem that raises up here, and there, and there. It's only being stuck. It's only that stupid table, and Sara's seriously done with the damn table.
At least sort of.
There isn't even a pause.
Sara doesn't even think about breaking this kiss yet. One hand slides up, fingers curving around the back of his head, and the other finds the edge of the table. One foot finding the flat of a support bar on it, and using that only to go about pushing herself up on the edge of it, and screw the fact it makes a slight screeching sound of movement.
She's done more with less, and could, even blind.
She's done of any of them now, except done.
Rules, and walls, and space.
Everything, that isn't, using her freed hand to grab the front of his shirt and pull him closer,
to that same edge that had galed her, between her knees, still kissing him.