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She’s five steps down the hallway before she stops, because, no, she’s not leaving. She’s Sara Lance, and she doesn’t leave, not anymore, at least.
So she pivots, retraces her steps, and pushes back through the door, just in time to see Ava cover her face with her hand, to see her breaking down into to tears, and she knows she’s made the right decision, because she’s absolutely not the sort of person who leaves her girlfriend (she’s ignoring the fact that maybe Ava thinks they’ve broken up) alone, crying.
Ava’s eyes snap up, and then she’s wiping the tears away hastily, her mouth shrinking into a frown. Her voice is ice cold, angry, when she speaks. “I told you to leave.”
“I know.” Sara crosses her arms. “I didn’t want to go. I’m not going to leave you like this. Not after everything we’ve gone through.” She crosses the room, sits down on the chair in front of Ava’s desk, leans forward. “I can’t— I can’t leave you like this. It hurts too much. I care about you too much. But it seems like…” she trails off, because she can’t bring herself to voice what she was about to say.
Ava, who had been staring at her desk, looks up, sets her jaw. “Seems like what, Sara?”
“Seems like you don’t care about me as much as I care about you.”
At that, a gasp escapes Ava’s lips, her mouth hanging open. She shakes her head, her eyes rolling skyward, and then she closes them, seemingly gathering herself. When she looks at Sara again, she’s clearly trying to look confident, but there’s a vulnerability, a tremble to her voice. “You really think that?”
It’s Sara’s turn to look down. “No. Yes. No. I don’t know. I just— I just don’t get it, Ava. You’re not— you’re not the same person you were when we met.” She winces as soon as she’s said it. “Not… not like that. You just— you approach things differently. You’re not such a stickler for rules. I just… I just didn’t get why you couldn’t care enough to trust me just… this one time.”
“God!” It bursts out of Ava, and she stands up, pushing her chair back, pacing around the room. “We’re going around in circles. All I do is trust you, Sara! It’s all I do! Because I care about you. Obviously I care about you. Would I be in here crying over you if I didn’t care about you?”
Sara blinks. “I mean… no. Probably not.”
“God, you’re such an idiot. I love you, Sara. I said nothing was going to change that, and I meant that. I literally love you more than I have ever loved anything or anyone else, because I wasn’t… I wasn’t supposed to feel, but I do.” She smiles a weak smile, and then there are tears streaming down her face again.
“I love you. I love you so much that it hurts. It literally hurts, because, sometimes, it feels like my body is rejecting it. Rejecting the emotions, rejecting love, rejecting you, because it’s so much. It’s so strong and so big and—” she sighs, collapsing into a chair at the edge of her office, too far away for Sara to reach out and touch, like she desperately wants to. But she doesn’t move closer, because Ava’s words have her frozen.
“Ava, I—”
She doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what she can say.
“I have given you everything, Sara. Everything. But I can’t give you this. Not my job. Not that.”
“Hank’s hurting the fugitives, Ava. He’s hurting them. You’re not the sort of person that lets that happen. I don’t care what you say about— about how people are more important that fugitives, because I know you know that’s not true. You wouldn’t have hired Mona if you didn’t think they deserved to be treated humanely. You wouldn’t have agreed to Charlie staying on the team. You’re not— you’re not that callous, baby. I know you. You care about them. What changed?”
Ava’s looks up slightly, her head in her hands. “What changed is how close I was to losing this job. And I can’t lose it. I can’t. I need it.”
“Why?” Sara asks, finally able to get up, to cross the room, to kneel down in front of Ava, their faces level. “Why? I know you’re good at it, but you’re good at lots of things.”
“Am I?” Ava whispers, tears streaming down her face. “This is all I know how to do. I can’t risk losing this. I can’t risk that, because then all I am is… your girlfriend, and I can’t be that. I can’t be that.”
Sara flinches at that. “All? ‘All’ you would be would be my girlfriend? That’s how you think about it? Like, I get wanting to have a purpose, but would it be so terrible to not have a job for a bit? So terrible? So terrible to have more time to spend together?”
Ava sighs, shaking her head, and then Sara realises that Ava’s entire body is shaking, trembling, and she’s gasping for breath, her eyes closed, and Sara panics, because Ava hasn’t gotten like this in months, and obviously something she’s said has triggered it.
All thoughts of the argument fall away, and all she can focus on is helping Ava. “Ava. Ava. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you,” she says, her voice desperate, frantic. And then she grimaces, because Ava can’t breathe, let alone tell her what do. “Ava,” she whispers, her lip wobbling. “I don’t know what to do.”
It seems like Ava, though, does. She grabs for Sara’s hands, placing them around her own neck. “Lap. Need to— feel you,” she gasps out, and Sara gets the message, pushing up and into Ava’s lap, leaning her forehead against Ava’s, stroking her fingers over the nape of Ava’s neck, until her gasps slow into regular breathes.
When Ava is finally back to herself, she grimaces. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to—” she gestures at Sara’s current position, legs bracketing Ava’s hips. “I should’ve dealt with it on my own. I shouldn’t have done that, I crossed a line, we’re still arguing, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
She’s spiralling, and it only stops when Sara slaps a hand over Ava’s mouth, shakes her head. “No. No. I love you. I’m not just going to sit by and watch you struggling to breathe, Ava.” She sighs, removes her hand. “I just— what did I say? What’s got you like this?”
Ava grits her teeth, then looks up at Sara, her eyes watering, wide and blue and so full of sadness it’s like Sara could fall into them. “I did some more research on the clones in 2213. They’re all— they’re all programmed”—she spits the word out—“to do one thing. To be one thing. Security or a babysitter or a teacher or a doctor or—” She cuts herself off, shakes her head again. “So, I can’t be that. I can’t just be one thing. I can’t just be your girlfriend. I need to have this. The Bureau. This job. I need to be more than that.”
Sara’s confused, though. “But— it’s not— it’s not like girlfriend is one of the things they are, right? You’re not like them if that’s all you are for a little bit, you know, just until we find you something else? You’re not like them, baby. You’re not like them.”
And then Ava laughs, and it’s harsh, and bitter, and strikes fear right through Sara’s heart.
“I’m exactly like them. You really think that they’d make the ‘perfect woman’ and not have her available for sex?” Ava says, her jaw so tight that Sara can see every muscle in her face flexing.
It hits Sara like a ton of bricks. Like all the air has been sucked out of her lungs. Like… like…
Like she’s sitting in front of her girlfriend, who’s just confirmed both of their worst nightmares.
“Oh, Ava,” Sara breathes. “Ava.” She sighs, looking down. “I—” The words choke in her throat. It’s not like she just doesn’t know what to say. It’s that there’s nothing to say.
“Sexy Ava.” She spits it out. “Available for all your romantic and sexual needs.” She says it in a cheery voice, like she’s reading it for a commercial. “They can make them any sexuality. Any personality. And anyone can get any of them. A straight dude wants to fuck a lesbian? Sure. Fantasy fulfilled. By someone that looks like me. By someone who thinks she likes women, because she was programmed to think that. So… I can’t just be your girlfriend. I have to be something more. Otherwise… otherwise all I can think at night is that that’s what I am. What I was meant to be. Some dude’s toy. Or… some girl’s, which, to be honest wouldn’t be much better.”
“Baby,” Sara whispers, her fingers carding through Ava’s hair. “That’s not— you’re not— you’re not…. You’re not just one thing. You know that, right? Even if you didn’t have a job, that wouldn’t— that wouldn’t mean you’re suddenly one of them. You’d still be you. Ava Sharpe. Time Bureau Director. Avid reader. Suit wearer. Excellent baker. Average chef. Anxious and rule following and sweet and stubborn and clever and unique and you. How could you ever think you could be just one thing, when you’re a million things all at once? You’re more complex than you could possibly imagine, baby.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re also an idiot, because you’re not listening to our girlfriend, who is right. You think they make AVAs that are idiots? I don’t think so.”
Ava smiles a tiny smile, a weak laugh escaping her throat, but tears are still streaming down her face. Sara rubs at them with her thumb, then sucks in a breath. “Can I kiss you? I really want to kiss you. I didn’t get to kiss you when you were in that dress, and I need to make up for lost time.” Ava nods, and Sara smiles, leans in, her hands on Ava’s cheeks, sinking into it, having missed Ava’s lips, despite it having been hardly a day.
“If you’d lived in 2213, you could’ve literally bought me, to do exactly this,” Ava whispers.
“I didn’t, though, did I? I didn’t buy you. I didn’t press a button and make you like girls. I didn’t make you fall in love with me.”
“Mmm,” Ava hums, her fingers running over Sara’s hip. “You kinda did. I was just minding my own business, trying to hate you, and then you had to be so insufferably…”
“Hot?” Sara suggests.
“I was going to say persuasive, convincing me that the Legends weren’t idiots, but I guess that works as well.”
Sara smiles. “Anyway. Like I was saying. We’re not together because I chose that. We’re together because we both chose that, okay?
And then Ava sighs, pulls back. “I still— I still can’t just… let this go, though, Sara. No matter how much I love you. I have a job to do. I can’t just let the creatures run wild.”
Sara sighs, her body sagging into Ava’s a little. Ava’s hands rest on her waist, rubbing circles into her skin. Sara closes her eyes, then says, “Okay.” When she opens her eyes, Ava’s expression is disbelieving. “Okay. I won’t try to release them all. I’ll help you contain them, as long as you make sure that Hank isn’t doing anything to do them. I’ll do that. I promise.”
“Thank you.” Ava lets out a quick breath, her eyes cast down.
“But the Kaupe is gone.”
Ava’s eyes snap back up. “What—”
Sara puts a finger up to Ava’s lips. “He’s gone, Ava. Mona’s taking him back to where he belongs. He’s not going to be a risk to anyone, not when he’s in his natural habitat.”
“What the hell do I tell Hank?”
“You tell him that it was never the plan to keep the creatures detained indefinitely, that your team has been undertaking detailed research in order to figure out where best the creatures should be released in order to cause the minimum harm to themselves or any human, and that you have humanely and safely re-released him into his proper place.”
“Huh,” Ava says. “That sounds… sensible.”
Sara smiles a fond smile, pressing her lips together as she looks down at Ava. “You’ve rubbed off on me.” She pauses, sliding slightly closer, gauging Ava’s reaction to the movement. When Ava justs holds Sara tighter, clutching her close, Sara decides to go for it. “In more ways than one,” she eventually finishes, and Ava’s cheeks tinge a satisfying shade of pink.
She rolls her eyes. “Shut up.”
“Mmm,” Sara hums, as if pretending to consider. “Make me.” Ava rolls her eyes again, but does, pressing their lips together. “See,” Sara whispers against Ava’s lips. “Isn’t this so much nicer than arguing?”
“Just a little bit.”