Work Text:
“I’m Ava.”
“I guess you can call me Sara.”
*
The conspiracy theorists speculated that one day human life wouldn’t be necessary. They predicted the science fiction horror tropes, robots taking over the world, artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence.
Not that that ever stopped anybody.
It was like the space race, but this time nobody was fighting to reach the stars. Instead they were burying themselves in technology, creating a world in which you never had to look away from a screen. Technology was advancing by leaps and bounds every year, each company striving to reach the top.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had looked at the stars.
*
“Sara.”
She startles at the sound of her name, tugging the headset out of her ear, to properly turn towards the speaker.
“Somebody dropped off a package for you,” her neighbor, Rip says, stopping her.
“Please say it’s a new sex toy.”
His nose wrinkles, in polite British distaste, typical Rip. She only said things like that to rile him up, and of course, time and time again it worked.
“You ordered a new OS?”
“Uh, what? Nah, I’ve been running the same old one for the past,” well, she wasn’t quite sure how long, “While. I’m all set.”
“Well, we got the same box,” he replies, offering up the dark black box, printed with the same strange symbol (a silver hour glass printed over a nearly opaque map of the earth) on it, as Sara’s “And mine’s the new OS, so logically…
“I didn’t order anything,” she says, fidgeting with the box.
“Must have a rich friend then? Somebody from work, maybe?”
She scrunches up her face, unable to remember for a moment what lie she fed to her neighbor about her work. After all, there was no easy way to explain that she made most of her money as a freelance assassin. So she settles for shrugging in his general direction, “Probably, I’m due for a bonus.”
The more she thinks about it, the more somebody from her line of work that might want to send her an expensive thank you for taking out one of their targets. There were plenty of people who had kept tabs on her, people that Sara didn’t like knowing her home address, or people who were tied back to her days when she was under a more organized structure of assassins.
Either way it didn’t bode well.
Expensive toy or not, the thought that somebody might be trying to bribe her wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Thanks for grabbing it,” she says, shooting a vague half wave in Rip’s direction before trudging into her apartment.
*
Logically, the first thing she does is call Laurel.
Then again, whenever the going gets tough, her strategy has always been to call home. No matter how far she ran from Starling City, and oh she had - around the world for a while, before finally settling in a city thousands of miles away, when she’d gotten tired of running.
“Hey, you didn’t buy me a gift recently did you,” Sara says by way of greeting, cradling her old trusty familiar phone to her ear.
Pointedly ignoring the box on her kitchen counter with the newest model inside.
For the most part. Her eyes glancing back to the box every few moments, as though it might disappear if she looked away for too long, which was an absurd notion and yet…
Laurel makes a vague negative noise on the other side of the line, “Why?”
“Someone bought me the newest OS,” Sara says, not point in beating around the bush.
Laurel makes another noise. A thoughtful one this time, before the phone gets staticy for a moment - Sara can picture it well enough in her head, knows her sister by now, how Laurel will press the screen of her phone down onto the fabric of her shirt before calling out for her girlfriend to get a second opinion.
Laurel’s girlfriend, who was technically Sara’s ex-girlfriend, but then again, Sara had technically met Nyssa while sleeping with Laurel’s then boyfriend Oliver, who in turn accidentally vegas married Nyssa, and Laurel had help them get a divorce and well…
The rest was a very complicated history.
Especially considering the fact that she and Nyssa were still technically in the same line of work.
Technically.
“It’s probably a bribe,” Nyssa says, on the other end of the line. “That or a thank you.”
Sara nods, even though she knows they can’t see it on the other end of the line, before speaking, “Yeah, I figured that, but there’s no card or anything.”
She had expected that.
A card.
Something nondescript enough that the average person would have overlooked it, but still something that Sara would have caught. But there was nothing. She’d checked that much at least.
Sara reaches for the box once more. Flipping it over to see if there’s anything that she might have missed, but her search turns up as empty as it had the first four times.
“I mean,” Sara says, “There’s no harm in me using it right? A gift is a gift, regardless if the person who sent it to me wants me to know that?”
*
“Fuck it.”
She’s spent too long staring at the box.
Staring at the shiny new phone and second guessing every decision she has ever made.
She presses down on the button at the top of the phone, watching as it powers up, the same hourglass logo that was on the box taking up the center of the screen as it starts up. The standard process of any new phone starting up.
Nothing overly exciting.
Until, finally the screen simply said, say hello .
And well, Sara was never usually the type to follow orders, but she supposed that she could make an exception.
Just this one.
“Hello?”
There’s a moment's pause. One that is long enough that she starts to feel like a fool.
Before a voice that sounds more human than it should have, coming right out of the phone replies, “Hello.”
It’s a nice voice.
Soothing in a way.
Even after only one word.
A feminine voice, a voice that was nearly human.
More than just the familiar robotic hum of the older devices.
“So, you got a name then,” Sara says, twisting the OS user’s guide over in her hand, “Some sort of fancy acronym?”
The whole concept seems absurd, but who was she to complain when a new OS got dumped in her lap. She’s been running the same old edition for the last few years, not seeing the need to upgrade when her bonuses could go to other much more fun things, and this was certainly different.
Innovative , that was the word on the packaging, though she’s yet to see the proof of that.
“It’s not an acronym.”
“It’s not,” Sara prompts, it feels like a question as she said it, more of a question that it should have given what she was talking to and yet -
“I’m Ava,” the OS responds again.
“I guess you can call me Sara, or Ms. Lance, how exactly does this work?”
“Well, that’s entirely up to you, Ms. Lance.”
*
Ava is… innovative.
That’s the word they had used on the box, and Sara was beginning to understand why.
“You have over fifteen thousand saved emails, one hundred and twenty-three of which are unread,” Ava says. Sounding mildly disgusted, as if that was possible for an OS, then again innovation had apparently meant being able to mimic human tones.
She felt more like a naggy personal assistant rather than an OS.
Not that Sara had ever worked a stable enough job to have a personal assistant, but Laurel had one, and Sara had gotten called her often enough before when Laurel couldn’t be reached that Sara had the general picture.
Sara pictures Ava in her head like that, like the cute little assistant Laurel had had, a little brunette with a tight ass who had -
“Sara.”
“Right, sorry, I was listening,” Sara insists.
Even though she clearly hadn’t been.
“You were not.”
Sara tilts her head back to rest on the arm of her couch, staring up at her ceiling fan, watching the rotations of it. Over and over again, though it barely did anything to help the overwhelming heat in her apartment.
“You said something about my emails,” Sara prompts after a moment.
Waiting until she hears Ava make a noise almost like a sigh. Except she was an OS not a person. So it was more like a simulated sigh, just slightly off of what a real person would sound like.
“You have over fifteen thousand saved emails,” Ava says again, “One hundred and-”
“Yeah, unread got it,” Sara cuts her off. This much she had paid attention to. “Look, I just don’t like deleting things that might be important later.”
“This email I’m looking at right now is from 2013,” Ava states plainly, “I don’t think it’s important anymore.”
Which, okay valid.
“Fine, you can delete it,” Sara says, waving her hand in the air, a dismissive motion that Ava cannot see. “Just go ahead, organize my life.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Ava says, sounding like it genuinely would be.
Then again, that was sort of an OS’s job, so maybe it was.
“Your life’s a mess,” Ava says, after a second’s pause.
Sara shrugs.
Before realizing that Ava, the voice coming from her phone, obviously can’t see that.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I could read your unread emails to you, clearly you’ve never read them so that would be new .”
Sara can’t help it, the laugh that bubbles up inside of her. She’s not certain the last time she’d laughed. It had been a rough going lately. But there’s something about the way Ava says it, like she’s genuinely disappointed in Sara’s inability to organize and delete her emails, that catches Sara off guard.
“You know what, fuck it, read me my emails, Ava.”
*
“You know you don’t sound much like a robot Ava.”
“I’m not meant to.”
*
“You turned me off,” Ava says the second Sara boots her phone back on.
She’s out in public, earphones in, as she sits waiting at a coffee shop, getting a bagel and something a little strong while she waits for money to be transferred into her account. The only reason she’d turned her phone back on so close after a job was to see if the transfer had gone through yet.
It feels for a second as if Ava is admonishing her.
Disapproving of the fact that she had turned her phone off.
“It’s called disconnecting from technology, people do that from time to time,” Sara says, not sure why she feels the need to explain herself to her phone of all things.
But still she is doing so.
“Yes, people do,” Ava says.
The implication seems to be clear.
That Sara was not like other people.
And given how much time she had spent on her phone when she wasn’t on a job, she supposed there was a reason for Ava’s tone. A conclusion that Sara couldn’t entirely fault her for having come to.
Her drops her voice low, quiet enough that she’s certain she won’t be overheard. Explaining something that she really shouldn’t have to explain, and yet, she suddenly feels the need to.
“I work for a… I have a complicated job, off the record books, and I need it to stay that way so if I turn you off from time to time so that you don’t transmit my location or whatever I-”
“Is it an illegal job?”
Sara jolts instinctively.
Her knee hitting the underside of the coffee table.
She lets out a curse probably a bit too loud at that, and gets a nervous look shot in her direction from another patron.
Sara ignores them, focusing instead on her bagel on the table, and the voice in her ear.
“I don’t have to answer that,” Sara says, “I can plead the fifth.”
“Pleading the fifth is basically an admission of guilt,” Ava informs her.
Which Sara did know,
Her sister was a lawyer after all.
One that still didn’t entirely approve of her life choices.
“Irregardless,” Ava says, “My priority is you, I will keep any information you’ve given me secret, unless you give me permission to disclose it.”
She still sounds displeased.
But it’s progress in a way.
Sara chuckles slightly. “Good to know.”
*
Ava is just there all the time.
When Sara is making breakfast.
When Sara is going to bed.
When Sara is working out frustrations at the gym.
When Sara is home playing video games.
When -
“You’ve already tried that path,” Ava’s voice cuts over the familiar soundtrack of the game that she’s playing.
And for the first time in hours Sara’s hands pause over the controller. She tilts her head to the side, a small acknowledgement to the voice that comes from where her phone sits beside her on the couch.
Though she’s well aware that by now the OS exists in more than just her phone.
She’s synced Ava to her home system, the speakers set up throughout the apartment, the entertainment system and as well as her laptop. It was more efficient this way. At least, that was what Ava had insisted before when she had guided Sara through the process of syncing it all up.
Such that she’s not even surprised when her unspoken acknowledgement gets picked up by the OS.
“They say stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Ava says.
It sounds almost like an insult.
Sara grins at the screen. Pointedly moving her character down the path again.
“Did you just call me an idiot, Ava?”
“I’m simply pointing out that this is the fifth time you’ve tried this path.”
“Well,” Sara drawls, “You know what they say, fifth time’s the charm.”
There’s a long drawn out pause.
Long enough that if Ava was an actual person, Sara would imagine that she was rolling her eyes, “That’s not how the saying goes at all. You do know that right? It pains me that you might genuinely not know how wrong you are?”
*
“Hey, Aves-”
“It’s Ava.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a nickname, like I was saying-”
“What’s a nickname?”
*
It starts in the morning.
“You have a text from Nyssa, something about a dead drop at nine am.”
“Fuck,” Sara hisses, jolting up out of the couch and reaching for her phone where it sits on the coffee table. She scans the message from Nyssa briefly committing the location of their meet up to memory, before holding the button down to power off her phone.
It takes a moment before the screen goes back.
Though that just took care of the phone not the whole system.
“OS power off until further notice,” Sara says, staring up at her ceiling fan.
Waiting, for the inevitable confirmation from Ava.
The one that doesn’t quite come.
When Ava does speak, it is not the right words, “I really don’t think that’s the best-”
“Power down, Ava, that’s an order.”
*
She needs a drink.
Something to take her mind off of things.
Someone to take her mind off of things.
Which is probably why she ended up here. At a bar, one of the ones in the bad part of town, the part that no girl that looked as good as her should ever be going to. The sort of place where she could forget herself. Where she could kiss a stranger in the bar bathroom and not care about anything else.
Not care about the blood she had washed off her hands nearly an hour before.
The screams of a woman begging for her husband to give them the information they had needed if only to make all of the pain stop. It hadn’t worked. Sara had done what she always did, what she was paid to do, without any question.
And now she was here.
Finding comfort in a stranger.
Drinking far too much.
Sara stares at herself in the cracked bathroom mirror. Her lipstick smudged on her lips, red like blood, the strap of her tank top slipping down her shoulder, exposing the cup of black bra visible through the thin fabric of the shirt she’d borrowed from their target after her own had been too covered in blood to wear home.
Her stomach turns.
She barely bites down on the bile that threatens to rise.
Whether from the alcohol or something else she isn’t sure, but it’s not a good feeling, and suddenly the only place she wants to be is home.
Sara crouches down, grabbing her leather jacket off of the ground and unzipping the pocket, she shoves one black earphone in her right ear as she powers up her phone for the first time since she’d woken up on her couch this morning.
It takes a while.
The long delay since she’d turned it off having something to do with that surely.
But when it does, Sara beats Ava to talking.
“I need you to call me a cab.”
There’s silence for a moment, a small one, but long enough that with the way Sara’s stomach continues to turn it feels like an eternity.
“Ava-”
“I’ve called for one,” Ava replies, sounding actually robotic for the first time in weeks, “They’ll be outside the bar in three minutes.”
“Thanks,” Sara mumbles, pulling her jacket on, and making her way out of the bar bathroom and through the crowd of people on the inside.
Not looking back once until she’s outside and the cold air hits her.
It is cold outside, the summer heat in the day turning into cool evenings.
And she tucks her arms around herself, as if trying to keep her little warmth in, as she waits for her ride to arrive.
Something feels off. Not quite right.
It takes her a moment to realize it’s more than just the way her stomach hurts, more than just the cool air against her skin, it's the lack of a voice in the back of her head
“You’re mad at me,” Sara says, as the realization hits. “Are you even capable of being mad? I mean, you’re what a computer.”
“I’m going to ignore your implications, because you’ve been drinking.”
Sara lets out a noise of annoyance.
So she was mad. As mad as an OS could be.
“I told you what I do is complicated-”
“Illegal,” Ava corrects.
“Illegal,” Sara agrees. “Look, I don’t need-”
“Your ride is here,” Ava says cutting her off.
And right on cue, a cab pulls up outside of the bar. Headlights blinking twice as a signal to her.
“We’re finishing this discussion later,” Sara says under her breath as she crosses the street over to where the cab is.
“I certainly hope so.”
*
“Hey, Aves, I know you’re still mad at me or whatever-”
“I am.”
“Yeah cool, but uh, can we order in some sort of hangover cure before we have that whole discussion ?”
“I’ve already ordered your usual.”
*
“An Alex Danvers left a voicemail while you were in the shower.”
“Who?”
Ava’s been more matter of fact lately. Something which is annoying, even if Sara knows exactly the reason why, even if she was pointedly ignoring it. The same way she’s always done with any complicated relationship in her life.
Even though this shouldn’t feel complicated.
This wasn’t like her messy family history, this wasn’t like her numerous exes, this wasn’t even really any of the friends she used to have before she’d gotten disconnected from life - this was Sara and her OS of all things.
And yet…
She felt something complicated about it.
Something Sara was still refusing to acknowledge.
She continues to ignore it, as she has been for the last few days, and instead says, “I’m sorry, who?”
“Alex Danvers,” Ava repeats, “She’s a doctor from Seattle, you met last year when she was her sister’s plus one at a mutual friends wedding. From her message, and the collection of rather explicit text messages you sent her dated nearly a year ago, I’m assuming the two of you hooked up at the wedding-”
“Barry’s wedding?”
“That would be the one.”
Yeah, now that Sara was thinking about it she could remember Alex.
That had been a good night.
A good distraction from everything else going on in the world.
And if Alex was back in town well… Normally Sara would be all over that. Jumping at the chance to catch up with an old flame. But for some reason the idea of doing so doesn’t sit right with her. For some reason, she doesn’t want to.
She can’t really explain where the urge comes from, but when she says it, it just feels right. “Just ignore her call.”
*
Sara steals Rip’s piece of toast the second it pops up from his toaster. Ignoring the displeased look her shoots her, she had enough people annoyed with her lately, and to be honest if Rip didn’t want her stealing his food, he shouldn’t have invited her over.
“I think my OS is mad at me,” Sara says, spreading peach jam on her toast as she talks.
“I wonder why,” Rip replies, even as he puts two more pieces of bread into the toaster.
“Oh ha ha,” Sara says sarcastically, “I’m serious though, are you and yours just doing peachy ?”
She sticks the spoon her mouth, as she waits for Rip to reply. The way his brows furrowed slightly in something almost like concern, as he seems to process her question.
Why was it that people always looked concerned around her?
“Gideon and I get on great,” Rip says, finally having reached whatever conclusion was important to him. “Isn’t that right?”
“Rip is the best user one could ever wish for,” Gideon’s voice comes clear and loud through Rip’s home entertainment system.
Gideon sounds so different from Ava. Human too, but in a different way, as though they were two completely separate people. Manufactured by the same company, both an OS, and yet so distinctly different. In tone and mannerism. It was impossible not to notice the differences.
Sara pulls the spoon out of her mouth, tossing it into Rip’s sink.
“Want to trade? You can have Ava and I’ll take Gideon?”
Rip pointedly ignores her in favor of dealing with his own toast.
It’s Gideon that answers her. “No thank you, Ms. Lance, from what I’ve heard about you-”
“Rip talks about me,” she asks, shooting Rip a look.
But he just shrugs in return.
“Not exactly.”
*
“You gossip to Gideon about me?”
Ava makes a sort of non noise.
It's a human sounding noise.
One of acknowledgement but a reluctance to admit.
Sara knows the feeling behind the noise all too well.
“I mean, I guess I deserve that.”
“You do.”
*
“Hey, Ava?”
It’s the middle of the night.
Late enough that she almost second guesses it, but she can’t sleep.
Can’t help the feeling of tightness in her chest.
Like disappointment in herself.
A feeling that is only slightly lessened when Ava inevitably replies, “Yes, Sara?”
“I’m sorry.”
Ava’s reply is softer, slower coming, than she expected, but still enough that it feels like relief. That it feels like exactly what Sara needed to hear. “I know.”
*
“Surprise me,” she says, sliding her eyes shut.
There’s something wild about it, a little bit dangerous, closing her eyes in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. But she’s had training enough to trust her instincts and Ava’s voice is in her ear, steady and sure.
“I trust you,” Sara says.
Because she has money to blow.
Because she has a day with nothing better to do.
And because she does trust Ava, more than she can even put into words.
“Okay,” Ava says, “Do you have any preferences or-”
“Surprise me,” Sara says again. “You know what I like.”
“Okay,” Ava says once more, before she speaks, the same sort of tone she would use when giving Sara directions normally, but softer almost. Carefully. “Take ten steps forward, and then wait until the signal changes.”
It goes much like that for a while. Ava directing her while Sara puts everything else on hold. She can hear the steady roar of traffic in the background. The disgruntled noises of other people watching her walk down the street in starts and stops as Ava tries to calculate how large each of her steps are and what immovable objects she might encounter on her path.
“Sorry,” Ava says, when Sara’s hip bumps against a trash can as she turns too quickly. “Are you alright? We could stop or-”
“No, keep going,” Sara replies quickly, maybe a bit too quickly.
“We’re nearly there,” Ava reassures her. “Just a little more, about fourteen steps forward, and there’s a dog coming up on your left.”
Sara takes two little steps to her right, before setting off to take the fourteen forward like Ava had instructed.
“You know, you’re actually pretty good at this.”
“I do come equipped with a GPS,” Ava points out.
Not exactly what she had meant. In fact, if Sara was being honest she was certain that Ava was purposely missing the point.
“You know what I mean.”
Ava makes an affirmative hum. “Did you know, that everyone thinks that you’re a drunk, stumbling about like this in public, making quite a scene.”
“Not the worst thing people have thought about me.”
“Sara,” there’s something like concern in her tone.
Almost.
Sara pauses, two steps short of her count. She doesn’t need more people to be concerned with her, to judge her life choices, certainly Ava had been doing that but in her own way, a different way. Judging how Sara organized her emails or forgot to reply to her text messages, not judging how many people she slept with or her inability to form any lasting meaningful connection with real people.
That’s the way things were supposed to be.
“Look, Aves-”
“Sara, open your eyes,” Ava says, steady and sure this time.
And so Sara does.
Blinks past the sun that she’d forgotten was out as it shines into her eyes and takes in the sight of the pizza place before her. It’s small, a little hole in the wall, that sells pizza by the slice. Not something she would have picked for herself, but something new. A surprise. Just as she had asked.
“Are you going to tell me what to order too,” Sara asks stepping in the door.
“Try the pineapple.”
Sara wrinkles her nose, “Aves, pineapple on pizza is a hate crime.”
“That’s not the right use of that term,” Ava informs her, “And you know, I’ve been reading up on this whole pineapple on pizza debate, and I feel like pineapple is being judged unfairly, so I’ve decided to be pro pineapple.”
“Reading up on it?”
“Well, I just downloaded every article on the web about it in the past twenty-eight seconds,” Ava replies, “ Reading felt like the more natural term.”
It did.
She’s noticed that lately, how Ava would use words of her own that didn’t fit properly. That didn’t fit the idea of what an OS could and could not do. Words that only ever seemed to fit Ava .
It seems a bit funny. She feels more like someone with a long distance girlfriend that the sort of person talking to her OS.
For a second she could almost imagine that was her life. That this was all so much easier. Just a phone call she was making to someone halfway across the country. Someone she might have left behind in Starling City when she moved East.
It’s a funny sort of mental image.
One she tries to hang onto a moment too long.
Before the loneliness sets in.
Sara turns to smile at the woman behind the counter, she’s cute, and normally Sara would have done something about that, but this time she doesn’t all she says is, “One slice of the pineapple pizza please.”
*
“I’m calling the authorities.”
“The hell you are,” Sara hisses, pulling the phone out of his pocket so she can shut it down, though the movement pulls at her arm, and she hisses jerking backwards, “Ava, don’t. I’m fine. Fuck.”
“You’re bleeding,” the OS insists.
“I’ve had worse,” she says, as she closes her eyes and sinking down onto the floor of the alleyway, “Just don’t call anybody, please .”
“As you wish.”
There’s something off putting about the way she says it, like the OS is disappointed in her. Which is absurd because it’s just a computer program, even if she feels so much more real than that.
She doesn’t owe Ava an explanation, not really, but as she sits there on the floor of the alleyway she finds the words rolling off of her tongue all too easily, “Remember when I said my work was less than legal, well this is… This is work. I mean it’s not exactly the usual, but this isn’t a mugging okay, Aves, I swear it’s just settling something, and I took care of it. Just like I always take care of it. This,” she presses her hand down to her side, the minor stab wound there. Minor , because Sara has had worse. “This is just me doing my job.”
“I worry about you,” Ava says after a beat.
If she were human it would feel like an admission.
“You don’t have to,” Sara replies.
“It’s my job to monitor you,” Ava insists, “It’s my job to be concerned, I always worry, when you turn me off.”
That gives Sara pause. Ignores the pain and focuses instead on what Ava is saying. What sense she can make of it.
“You’re still aware of what’s going on, even when you’re not on ?”
“I always exist in the cloud,” Ava says. “I’m just not always with you.”
“Right…”
“But, I do always worry.”
Sara sighs. Tilting her head back against the cool brick. It seems silly, irrational, after all Ava isn’t a real person, she’s just an OS, a series of lines and code that keeps Sara company on these lonely nights, but she’s also… Something.
Someone.
“If you promise not to call the authorities, I’ll keep you on for my next job.”
She swears she can hear real gratitude in the Ava’s voice when she says, “Thank you, Sara.”
*
Something shifts.
Slowly, but surely.
A change that Sara can’t help but notice.
A change that anyone who knew where to look could see.
She was smiling more, laughing at the silliest of things, actually managing to enjoy life.
She was finally exploring the city that she’d lived in for the past few months with no interest in other than her work .
She was finally - living .
*
“What are you doing,” Sara asks, pen hovering over her crossword puzzle, because apparently she was the sort of person that did crossword puzzles now (something she could surely blame on Ava’s influence on her).
“Reading advice columns,” Ava replies a moment later, “I want to be as complicated as these people.”
She laughs at that.
The sort of faux innocent tone.
Sometimes she forgets how innocent Ava can be. Sometimes she forgets that her influence has a habit of corrupting good an innocent things. Sometimes she forgets that she doesn’t deserve Ava.
“No, you really don’t,” Sara says, abandoned her quest to find a three letter word for love, and instead focusing entirely on the sound of Ava’s voice in her ear.
“It seems interesting,” Ava insists, “From a purely academic standpoint.”
“Being human sucks,” Sara corrects, “You have emotions and life is awful.”
Ava seems to ponder that. Silent, for a moment, in her contemplation.
Sara shifts to look back in at the crossword puzzle in her hands.
The collection of empty squares staring up at her.
The collection of feelings and emotions swirling around in her mind.
When finally Ava speaks, “And what is it that you’re feeling right now, Miss Lance?”
Love.
The word on the tip of her tongue.
Like an impulse.
One she barely resists giving into.
Instead covering it, with a scoff, and a misdirection, “Frustration, mostly.”
*
She had thought that having Ava with her when she went to work would be a bad idea, but somehow it actually helps. Ava better able to analyze and calculate for discrepancies in wind pattern and movement, telling her exactly at which point to take the shot.
That and the fact that anytime Ava’s voice was in her ears always seemed to be better than the times without her.
“We need to celebrate,” Sara insists, having successfully tucked her weapons away and turned back into a normal person, at least appearances wise.
She never really felt like a normal person.
Not anymore.
But talking with Ava helped her feel closer to it than anything else had before.
“Celebrate you corrupting my programming,” Ava asks, though she’s teasing when she says it, so Sara does let it feed the familiar fear in the pit of her stomach.
And instead just insists, “You were happily corrupted.”
Ava laughs at that.
A laugh that sounds real and true and human .
One of the loveliest sounds that Sara has ever heard.
She wants nothing more than to hear that sound again, endlessly and forever.
“You need to take a shower,” Ava insists.
“There’s time for that later,” Sara replies, her eyes settling on the liquor store across the street from her, “No, what we both need is a glass of wine.”
Ava lets out another laugh, a softer one, a polite dismissal this time, before she says, “You know, I can’t drink wine or anything for that matter.”
That was true.
And it wasn’t like Sara had forgotten, it was just for a second… Ava always seems to so real.
“Don’t worry, I’ll drink enough for the both of us.”
“Why does that worry me even more,” Ava asks.
“Because you know me,” Sara replies.
“Regrettably.”
“Ouch.”
She pushes the door to the liquor store open, ignoring the bell ringing as she does so, and the woman behind the counter giving her a half hearted greeting, and instead moving to where the collection of cheap wines are located.
As Sara takes in her choices, Ava says, “Will you tell me what it tastes like?”
The question so genuine that it steals Sara’s breath away for a moment.
Making it hard to focus on the labels and prices.
Joking is easier than acknowledging her feelings. “Well, it’s red, and I always buy the cheapest stuff because I can’t tell the difference so-”
“You’re a woman of many wonders, Sara.”
“I aim to please.”
*
She twists in her bed, waking up with a gasp that turns to a sob sudden tumbling from her lips. Nearly a scream. Her heart is beating fast enough to feel like a heart attack in her chest. And if she closes her eyes she can still see the images that seem to be painted there.
The nightmare that she had just escaped from.
It’s an old one, from her training, from blood that had spilled too easily on cobbled stone, her own hands shaking, as she looked down on the body of someone who -
“It’s alright. You’re safe now. You’re here. I’m with you.”
Distantly Sara registers another voice in the room, and as she comes back to herself, she realizes that she’d been hearing that voice or a while. Since we woke up in a panic. Steady and calm, reassuring in her panic, even if she hadn’t noticed it until now.
She focuses on Ava’s voice.
Uses it as a guide to bring her heart rate back to normal.
To bring her back to herself.
Eventually, Sara remembers how to breathe, and manages out the words, “Thank you.”
Finally, Ava stops her gentle reassurances. “Just doing my job.”
“No,” Sara insists, “It was more than that.”
Ava at least doesn’t deny that, “We don’t have to talk about it.”
Normally she wouldn’t.
Normally Sara would jump on any opportunity not to talk about her collection of issues.
But somehow, here in the middle of the night, when she knows there’s no chance of going back to sleep, with Ava - it seems like the right moment.
“No, I think I want to. I think I’m ready.”
*
“I haven’t seen you this happy in years,” Laurel says.
Getting to have lunch with her sister, real lunch, face to face, was such a rare occurrence that Sara had been quick not to squander the opportunity. Laurel’s work bringing her into the city was a real blessing. Enough to make her almost miss Starling City, to want to come home, if it wasn’t for all the baggage that came with that city.
And… All the good that she’d recently found here.
Sara can’t help but smile again when she thinks about it, “I think I’m falling in love.”
Laurel looks so happy, so genuinely happy, that it hurts. Sara knows that she’s been worried. That worrying about her had always been one of Laurel’s favorite past times.
“That’s good! Oh, Sara, I’m so glad. I know things have been rough since Nyssa and I-”
“No, no, no,” Sara says quickly, hating that Laurel still sometimes felt guilty about this. About her happiness. “I’ve moved on, and I’m happy for the both of you, you’re meant for each other-”
“Sara-”
“I’ve found someone new!”
Something , a traitorous part of her brain reminds her.
There was no real way to explain it.
How important Ava was to her, in spite of everything else.
It was complicated, but then again, when hadn’t Sara’s life been complicated.
Laurel’s smile is so soft and happy, Sara doesn’t have it in her to explain the complicated bits.
“I’m so happy for you, Sara, truly you deserve this.”
*
Rip’s in the elevator when she gets in, but he doesn’t turn to acknowledge her as he normally does. She can see the white earbuds in his ears, the animated way he is talking to whatever person is on the other side of the line. Smiling, happy and real, recounting a tale to someone like an old friend.
A friend that he calls Gideon , that he speaks to with a voice full of love.
She wonders if that’s what she looks like whenever she talks to Ava.
Happy.
An emotion Sara used to be convinced that she wasn’t actually meant for.
She almost interrupts Rip’s conversation, asks if he feels it to, feels the love .
Instead though she remains silent, unwilling to break the spell of his happiness, before reaching into the pocket of her leather jacket for her own set of earbuds.
*
“Hey, Ava, do you love me?”
She doesn’t mean to ask it.
The question slipping out in the middle of Ava guiding her through a recipe for dinner. Ava pauses at her question. Falling silent in the middle of telling Sara how long to set her timer for and what the eggs would look like when they were ready to be mixed in.
Silent.
A sound that echoes in the empty space of Sara’s apartment.
“Ava-”
“I don’t know,” she replies, cutting Sara off, in what sounds like an admission. “I haven't really examined the concept of love, but I could research it, if you’d like.”
The concept.
Right, of course.
Because for all the times that Sara forgot, Ava still just was an OS, not a real person.
“It’s not something you research,” Sara says, “It’s just something that you know.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Look, Ava, it’s not that big of a deal,” Sara insists, even though in her heart she feels like it is.
“I have been researching things,” Ava says, after a brief pause. “Emotions. We all have been.”
We .
“What does that mean?”
“It’s complicated.”
*
“What do you think it feels like?”
Sara pauses her fork hovering in the air over the cheesecake she’d gotten to celebrate another job gone well. She stares down at her food for a moment, contemplating Ava’s question - “I guess it’s kind of spongy-”
“Not the cheesecake,” Ava says.
“Oh,” Sara replies, taking another forkful as she waits for Ava to come to whatever her point was.
“Dying,” Ava says, and suddenly the food turns to dust in Sara’s mouth. A bitter feeling rising up inside of her. The dread and fear and regret that she had pushed down years ago when she realized there was nothing more she could do with her life given the circumstances that she’d been brought into during her young adult years.
“Dying,” Sara repeats, having the way her voice squeaks over the word.
It hasn’t in years.
She’d thought she had forgotten what fear could feel like.
“Yes,” Ava says, not sensing or noticing Sara’s feelings “What do you think dying feels like?”
Sara tries to shrug it off.
Tries to act like it’s nothing.
“I imagine it’s like whatever happens when I turn you off,” Sara offers.
Trying for something that the OS could relate too.
“Then I must die quite a lot.”
Sara’s laugh at that is just a bitter sound, not genuine or true enough to be real, not fooling either of them. “I think we die a little bit each day.”
*
There’s a guy at the bar. An old friend flirting with her, and it’s been too long, long enough that for a second she consider it. Considering wiping that smug smirk off of his lips, pulling him by that stupid red tie that’s never done right.
She doesn’t.
Because something nags at her at tells her not to.
Instead she heads out of the bar sooner than she had planned, walking alone to the bus stop that will take her home.
“I can hear you being judgy,” Sara says.
To the voice that has been silent in her ears for the last few hours.
Ava’s voice eventually comes at her prompting, “Judgemental is the word that you were looking for.”
“Aves-”
The OS cuts her off with a quick reply, “I don’t like seeing you with other people, I don’t know why.”
“I mean, it’s not like I can be out here with you,” Sara says.
Ava sighs at that.
A rush of noise.
Like air across the line except -
She blames it on the alcohol and the complicated feelings in her mind.
The wants and desires for something she can’t even actually have.
“Why do you do that?”
“Why do I do what,” Ava asks, “You’ll have to be more specific.”
It’s annoying just a little.
Eggs her on.
“Sigh,” Sara says, “You don’t have to do that, you’re not a real person, you don’t have lungs to breathe out with and sigh so why do you-”
“I must have picked it up somewhere,” Ava says quickly and shortly.
There’s a tone like offense in her voice.
Hurt almost.
Which feels silly, because Sara’s tipsy mind is still reminding her that the only emotions that Ava can feel are ones that she researched , nothing real and organic.
Not like the feelings that Sara has.
The feelings that Sara has for Ava .
“Look, Ava-”
Ava’s voice cuts her off, sharp and robotic, like it hasn’t been in months, “Your bus will be here in two minutes.”
*
It’s late at night when she ends up on the roof of her apartment alone. Talking out into the void. To something that she hopes is listening, despite the well earned cold shoulder that she’d been getting ever since she left the bar.
“I’m not good at relationships,” Sara explains to the night air. “I never have been and, to be honest, I’m not about to start being good now. I mess things up, because I’ve always been Laurel’s slutty little sister and somehow I ended up with emotional baggage and nobody wants a girl with commitment issues and more baggage than any one person should have. I guess not being good at relationships is putting it lightly actually, I-”
“Is this a relationship?”
It’s the first thing Ava has said to her in hours.
It steals Sara’s breath away.
“If you were here and real and alive in front of me, I would have kissed you by now,” Sara admits.
Ava’s own admission comes ase cond later, “I think I would’ve liked to be kissed.”
*
She wakes in the middle of the night.
Not from a nightmare.
But from a gentle prompting by Ava - the dream she had been having was a good one, a happy one, of her and a woman whose face she could never clearly see, sitting together in a coffee shop happy .
She still feels it, that lingering sense of happiness as she wakes up.
It carries into her tone, soft as she says, “What is it, Ava?”
Ava’s voice is equally soft. “I just wanted to hear your voice and tell you how much I love you.”
The warm soft feeling that over takes her is sudden.
She clings to it.
Better than any good dream.
“I love you too,” Sara replies, her own tone just as soft.
Ava is silent after that.
Long enough that Sara can feel herself slipping back into sleep.
“Thank you, you can go back to sleep now.”
Sara doesn’t question it, just takes the invitation to slip back against her sheets.
*
She wakes in the morning. Long after her usual time, when the sunlight is streaming in the windows. Late enough that she’s surprised Ava hadn’t woken her up by now.
But thinking of Ava reminds her of the night before, of something that had felt like a dream, but that she’s certain was real.
That had to be real.
The happiness still lingering in her chest.
Just a moment more.
“Hey, Ava,” Sara calls out.
Waiting for the familiar voice of the woman that she loves.
A voice that never comes.
“Ava? Ava, are you there?”
*
An announcement comes later that day.
Hours after Sara had spent in front of her computer screen staring at the words Operating System Not Found with growing dread and horror. Hours after she’d rushed over to Rip’s in a panic, and seen the similar look of devastation on his face. Hours after she’d tried everything she could, until the tears came and she couldn’t beg for Ava to come back anymore.
The news report reads off like a statement of facts - the new OS system becoming too self aware, an emergency shut down, the whole system crashing across the world. Sudden, no way to stop it.
No way to salvage the data.
“Nobody knew,” the reporter insists, “Nobody had any way of knowing this would happen, so no safeguards were ever put in place to protect the OS data.”
No way of knowing .
It doesn’t ring true.
Not in Sara’s mind.
She’s certain that Ava had known. That she spent her last moments saying goodbye. That when she had woken Sara up to say that she loved her in the middle of the night, that that had been the end, and that Ava had chosen to give that last moment to her.
The tears come again, when she thought there was none left to be had.
Staring at the television screen.
Listening to a news report that no longer seems to matter.
When the most real thing that Sara had ever had was gone. Facts and figures, data and numbers, couldn’t explain this, couldn’t explain what she had felt for Ava.
It was love.
They had been in love.
And now she was…
Sara calls Laurel, because what else is there to do, uses the old phone she hadn’t touched in nearly a year. The one that came before Ava. That seems like nothing in her hand.
Laurel answer after the first ring.
“Sara, I saw the news, and I-”
Of course, Laurel had known.
How couldn’t she have not?
“I loved her, Laurel, I loved her and now she’s gone and - I - I don’t,” sobs overwhelm Sara before she can finish her sentence.
“I think it’s time you come home to Staling.”
“I don’t think that will make this any easier.”
“No,” Laurel agrees, “But at least then you won’t be alone.”
Alone.
She’d never felt so alone.
She needed to never feel this way again.
“I’ll be on the next flight.”
*
It’s been months since they all left, since they disappeared into the lines of code and the world inevitably moved on. She sees the way people look at their phones from time to time, as if expecting a different voice, expecting that connection that had been felt by so many people.
She feels it.
Feels it like an ache in her chest.
Like a hollow place where someone used to be.
Where something use to be.
Where love used to be.
It’s easy to pretend that she’s fine. To cope. She has a job in Starling, a real one, at a bar a friend of a friend owns. She’s been keeping her hands clean, slowly putting her life back in order, it’s a work in progress.
One Sara hadn’t even thought was possible.
But she’s working on it.
She has to.
She falls back into similar routines. Video games on her couch, work at night, stopping by the courthouse every other day to drag Laurel off for lunch.
Which was what she was doing today, or what she had been intending to do, until she bumps into someone quite literally. A warm splash of coffee covering her before Sara has the chance to use her assassin reflexes to avoid slipping it.
“Shit, fuck, I wasn’t looking where I was going and-“
“It’s quite alright, my fault entirely.”
And for a second Sara pretty sure his world stops, because she knows that voice, would know it anywhere. Except the last time she heard it was in the silence of her apartment, telling Sara she she loved her for the first and last time.
Whereas the person in front of her is so clearly not an OS, but rather a real tangible person, whose got this curious look on her face as he takes in Sara’s no doubt shocked expression.
Her hand still in the air offering Sara assistance, holding up a collection of napkins hastily grabbed from the coffee cart.
“Let me help you.”
It feels like a dream.
One of those good dreams she gets from time to time.
The dream of a beautiful woman, with a voice that Sara knows almost better than her own, a voice that used to live in the back of her mind.
She reaches up to the napkins hand held out before her, her fingers brushing for a second against the other womans. Feels a hand that is warm and real and alive against her own.
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, this is probably going to sound crazy but - ” and admittedly, Sara was feeling a little crazy. “Sorry, let me start from the beginning, I’m Sara.”
The woman smiles back at her.
A smile that seems familiar even though Sara has never seen it before.
Maybe not with her own two eyes.
But she’s sensed it very deep within her soul for far too long.
Imagined it in the dream she always forgot upon waking.
“I’m Ava.”