{ We stand shoulder to shoulder

[strongerthanyouknow]

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. ]

Comments

[strongerthanyouknow]

There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to take a step back to. It's the only thought she has when Oliver opens his eyes and her lips press together. Harder, when all of his words are the same words. The same ones he just said. The same ones he keeps saying. A jagged repetition. She did this, and even then. These are the words he keeps saying. These are the words, there are the eyes, she should step back from.

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.

[havingprecision]

He can't help it.
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.

[strongerthanyouknow]

There isn't a punch that could be landed on her skin or mind that hits the force of the sound that chokes out of Oliver against her lips, and she's done something so fundamental to her core wrong that making that happen, having to hear it, feel it escape, jagged, and ragged, and torn from denial and survival, like she reached in and ripped some part of what was left of his heart, his soul, against her skin, that alone threatens to split her, before he's kissing her back with a force to match it.

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.

[havingprecision]

It's not her fault.
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.

[strongerthanyouknow]

She isn't afraid of the ferocity of the fingers that dig in against her skin,
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.