Chapter Text
"I’m sorry, Felicity. I didn’t think about how having Laurel on the team would affect you. You and Oliver. Your relationship. I know how good you are for Oliver, and I don’t want that to stop," Sara said. She had been wanting to talk to the techie ever since she came back for a visit to check on Laurel’s progress and membership on the team, and saw the distance between Oliver and Felicity. She couldn’t help but that she was to blame for it. After all, she had asked Oliver to train Laurel because she couldn’t do it herself.
"Not your fault, Sara," Felicity responds, sitting on her usual chair in the lair, looking the other woman who was standing by the opposite table in the eye.
"No, I asked this of Ollie. Laurel wanted to help the Arrow and she needed to be trained, so I asked Ollie to accept her in the team. It was the least I could do for Laurel. You know what I’ve — we’ve, Ollie and I — have done to her. How I’ve — we’ve — hurt her. She needed to be part of this. Of Ollie’s life. She would have gotten involved even without the Arrow’s approval anyway. So I asked Ollie to train her, to include her in the team, and—"
"And he couldn’t say no. Not to you, not to Laurel. I know that, Sara," Felicity interrupts.
She didn’t want to have this conversation. It was unnecessary. She’s always known that the Lance sisters had a hold on Oliver, on their Ollie, and he could never deny them anything they wanted. She didn’t blame either of the Lance sisters. She didn’t blame Oliver either. There was no one to blame. It was what it is.
It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt though.
She had shared a new closeness with Oliver over the past few months. A closeness that made her believe that they could have something more. That they could have a future together. He had been behaving as if he meant it when he told her loved her, that he was finally believing that he could be the kind of man that could love someone like her. She had began to hope that maybe, someday Oliver would love her back for real.
Then Oliver came to her and Digg with the request from Sara and Laurel for Oliver to train Laurel to take Sara’s place on the team. Despite Digg’s very vocal objections to the idea, Oliver couldn’t say no to the request. It was then that Felicity realised that he would never let the hold the Lance sisters had on him go. He would always feel responsible for them, for being the object that caused one sister to betray the other. For fucking one sister when he was in a relationship with the other. He would always feel beholden to them, for better or for worse.
So Felicity swallowed all the hope that she allowed to build in her heart in the past few months and the disappointment at the realisation that there would always be the Lance sisters for Oliver, and distanced herself from him.
She didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it. But now Sara was confronting her with it. It had to stop.
"You know, I wrote a paper on 'The Nature of Love' in college. I had taken a summer course on the Philosophy of Love after my first two semesters in uni. My professors advised against me taking tech courses over the summer — something about MIT producing well-rounded individuals and not just science nerds. I was politely advised to take a non-tech course for the summer as an elective. And I couldn’t go back to Nevada — my mom had a new lover at the time and she told me, in not so many words, to make myself scarce then," Felicity says.
Sara looks at her in confusion.
"At that time, I needed to find a logical explanation as to why my mother never loved me. And why my dad left. I was having an insecure moment. Well, up until that point, an insecure life. So I studied up on love. Read a whole load of books on it. This conversation reminds of me of that summer and that paper," Felicity further explains.
"Did it help?" Sara asks.
"Oh, yeah, loads. Well, at the very least I learned what love was and wasn’t about. I have no illusions."
"And?"
"One is either loved or not loved. One can never force or convince someone else to love them. No matter how good one is, it will never guarantee that one will be loved or more specifically, that one will be loved back.” Felicity smiles sadly at Sara, and continues.
"It would have been nice to know that when I was younger, you know? Maybe I would have been a lazy sloth with bad grades but had a lot of fun instead of someone who tried everything to get her mother to love her back. Or someone who believed, naively, I might add, that if she had perfect grades and a full ride to MIT, that that would be enough for her dad to magically reappear and love her again. If had known that when I was a kid, I would have had more fun in high school, for sure."
Sara looks at Felicity sadly. She couldn’t imagine being that girl. She had grown up knowing that her family loved her. Before she can respond, the other woman adds:
"Love is never a reward for being good. No matter how loyal one is, how trustworthy, how remarkable — it doesn’t mean that she’ll be loved by the person she loves and wants to receive love from," Felicity’s voice breaks.
She looks away from Sara. Sniffles, and then takes a deep breath. And then turns back, braced and ready to make her point.
"The opposite is true as well, Sara. No matter how bad a person is, or how evil that person thinks they are, it doesn’t mean that that person will never be loved. Or that you are not loved. Oliver loves you. He loves Laurel. He will always love you. He will always love Laurel. It has nothing to do with whether or not you and her are good or bad. He loves you anyway."
"And you?" Sara asks in a quiet voice, meeting Felicity’s eyes.
"Oh, I kinda love you, too, Sara!"
"That’s not what I meant, Felicity," Sara responds sternly, letting Felicity know that she will not allow her to joke her way out of this.
With her eyes averted, Felicity says, “I know what you meant. And really, that’s not your concern, Sara. Whatever this .. thing with Oliver is … you shouldn’t worry about it. We’re good. I’m still here.”
"He loves you, Felicity."
"I thought he did. I’m sure in his own way, he does. Maybe. But again, nothing I can do will make him love me. So I’m not going to worry about it. You shouldn’t either."
"I’m not worried about it. I know he loves you, Felicity. And I’m happy about it. For you and especially for him! You have no idea the effect you have on him. How happy you’ve always made him. Even when we were together, Felicity, he would look at you with such affection, such happiness, such joy. He would say your name as if just saying it calmed him. Gave him such peace. He would turn to you as if you had all the answers in the universe … And I was so happy for him, for my friend, that he had found someone who could do that for him.”
Sara pauses before she continues.
"When I found out that the two of you had been spending a lot of time together these past few months, I was elated. I had hoped that Oliver would finally allow himself to be with you. That he finally believed that he deserved to be with someone like you… That’s why I thought that I could ask him to train Laurel, to have her on this team. Because I thought the two of you were solid. It didn’t even occur to me that it would cause this rift between the two of you! And I’m sorry, Felicity. I am. Once again, I’m interrupting Oliver’s happiness — and that’s the last thing I want to do." At this point, Sara was unabashedly in tears.
Felicity stands up from her chair to wrap her arms around Sara. “Ssh, ssh, it’s OK, Sara. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame Laurel. I don’t blame Oliver. It’s OK. It’s all right.”
"I never wanted to hurt you, Felicity. Please believe that. You have been nothing but kind to me. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry," Sara implores in a tiny voice, holding on to the smaller woman.
"Sara, listen to me," Felicity takes a step backwards from Sara and hold the taller woman’s shoulders in her hands. "You have nothing to apologise for to me. Nothing, you hear? What’s happening between Oliver and I right now, it’s not your fault. It’s just me remembering the lessons I learned that summer and letting go of whatever naive illusions I might still have had about love. That Oliver would never love me the way he loves you and Laurel. That it would always be you and Laurel for him. Nothing I can do will ever change that. It’s no one’s fault, Sara. It is what it is."
Felicity tries to keep her tears in, to keep swallowing the words that confirmed her broken heart, to be strong for Sara. But she couldn’t. So she turns away from the other woman to hold her own face in her hands. And she cries.