Chapter Text
Laurel was sitting at her dining room table, pen in hand, the contents of several files spread across the surface.
Laurel was so... grown up. So adult, having shed whatever lingering vestiges of teenager-hood that had still been present before she’d... left. A surge of pride blossomed through her chest-- Laurel had grown up and gone to law-school and gotten her own gorgeous apartment. Laurel had been alright, just as she’d tried to convince herself again and again over the years. Before the earthquake that had shaken fear and doubt into her heart.
She straightened from her position against the fire escape, turning from the light and warmth of Laurel, of family, and slipping back into the shadows, returning to her own “home”.
She knew that every day she stayed in Starling City her risk of being discovered by Oliver probably doubled. But she simply couldn’t just pull herself away. Her excuse had been to make sure they were okay after the earthquake, and she had. They were. She should have left weeks ago. But seeing her sister and her father had become almost an addiction. Watching them go about their lives with her just outside, peeking in. Not disrupting.
They had gotten on just fine without her. And they would continue to.
She told herself that she was staying away to protect them from the League, from the repercussions of her own selfish actions. And she was. But she couldn’t confidently tell herself that she would just walk up to them if the League wasn’t there. She wasn’t the person she’d been. She was so, so much worse. She knew they wouldn’t want her back.
She wanted to be remembered as she was-- the bright, energetic, smart young woman with enough smiles to spare. Not for what she’d become, this thing. This monster.
The sun was starting to peak over the horizon, signalling her curfew with a pink haze as she pulled herself up into the chamber of the clock tower. Her stomach rumbled faintly but she pushed the discomfort away. She didn’t mind hunger, she’d felt it plenty of times before.
She leaned her staff against a column, removing her gloves before doing another quick scan of the place. Sometimes, Sin would crash in the corner, completely oblivious to the world around them and hidden in shadow. It gave her a lot of anxiety. Seeing no sleeping teenagers, she sighed and peeled her mask back from her face rubbing at the grease paint around her eyes. She pulled at the platinum blonde wig, scratching the itch that had been needling her scalp for at least an hour. She tossed the pins on their pile, more like a tiny mountain in its own right now.
It was nights like these that Sara ached for water. A shower, amazing. A bath, heavenly. But she would settle for just enough water to do more than take a sip from a warm plastic bottle. Sweat dripped down her spine and matted her hair. It had been a week of heavy exercise in tight leathers since her last shower. Not to mention that tonight had been particularly hot. She would have to ask Sin for their gym card again, and she hated asking Sin. She was supposed to be protecting them, not the other way around. Sin stretched their cash to bring her food and fresh plastic bottles of water.
Sin had even braved the homeless center to obtain the pile of blankets that she shoved in one corner and retired to every night. Sin had probably done more for her than she had for them.
She stretched her arm to tug the laces of her corset after laying her jacket out. She shivered when the cool morning air hit her sweat-soaked skin and started rubbing down with a dirty cloth, checking every corner and shadow with every breath. If she was caught here, with her pants literally down as she peeled out of them for the night, she was probably screwed, no matter how good she was.
She slipped on a shirt and some shorts, daring to take another sip before padding over to the roll of blankets, muscles a dull ache. Say what you will about the them, she thought with a small chuckle, at least they got large, comfortable beds to sleep in every night there.
She snuggled down, laying on her back and starting at the distant, towering roof. She had that idle thought about how loud it would be inside an actually functioning clock tower. And then it hit her-- how completely alone she was. The loneliness was crushing, pressing down her chest, making it hard to breathe. She pulled the blanket further up, tucking her face away until only the crown of her head was visible. She focused on taking deep breaths-- she wasn’t about to cry now after all these years, over this. Her measured breaths, staving off a panic attack, eventually lulled her into sleep. She tried not to think about that either; how she wasn’t even safe asleep, how her own mind would torture her with visions until she woke up sweating, tears fighting at her eyes and screams fighting at her throat. If she thought about it-- how there was no where she could run and nothing she could do because her brain would simply torture itself-- she would completely lose it.
So no, she wasn’t going to think about it. She was going to force herself to take deep breaths, calm down, and fall asleep.