Who: Sara and Oliver What: Ollie is breaking some neeeews Where: the prison Warnings: emotions, swearing, etc
Avoidance.
Yeah, that was the way Sara was dealing with things right now. Avoid the problem and she didn't have to feel. Shame her mind wasn't quite in tune with the game plan. In the slow moments, when she had too much time to think, all she could think about was what Oliver wanted to talk.
All of this sucked.
Sara yanked a fingerless glove on as her lips turned down into an annoyed frown. What was the point of this place. The two people she wanted around weren’t here. Dad, Laurel… Plus, there was the whole matter of her being a monster. Kara’s goody two-shoes routine was beyond stupid. Hell, everything was stupid at this point. What she needed was to go outside the prison and break some rotting skulls. If she found a bottle of jack in the process? Bonus.
She was just jamming a blade into a sheath when she stilled. “What do you want, Ollie?” With a look of pure indifference she turned to look at one of the few people she trusted. “I'm not talking about my feelings. I'm going out, I'm killing zombies, and then I'm going to find a liquor store to raid. Problem with that?”
Sara Lance knew she wasn't a good guy. Good guys didn't have a monster inside of them that pushed them to kill. They didn't get picked to save the world because they were unimportant. No, Sara, was a nobody now. If she hadn't come back- It didn't matter. The what is after the island just didn't matter.
Her indifference cracked just a tad as emotions flickered across her face. Life was so goddamn unfair and she was getting real sick of it all.
“Out of my way, Ollie.”
It was hard to remember the day that he lost Sara. It had affected Oliver greatly and even when Sara was resurrected. The loss was still heavy on his soul and when Sara decided to take on her adventures across time he constantly worried about her, wondered what she was doing, if she would ever return to their current timeline. The history between them was always going to be there which was what Oliver used to get him through the barriers Sara often put up.
The last time he saw Sara her father had died. He didn’t get the chance to comfort her, not when Oliver was facing his own problems. The world now knew that he was the Green Arrow and prison was his calling. There was nothing he could do for her until now. Now maybe the two of them could have a conversation.
“We need to talk.” Because Oliver needed to explain. He needed to tell Sara about her father, about Laurel and what happened. Sara deserved the truth because everything that happened to them had been awful and terrible all at the same time. They had already loss so much and the death toll didn’t seem to stop.
But no, he didn’t get out of her way. Oliver stood there, standing in the way of Sara’s exit. “You can go. You can do whatever you want but only after you and I have talk. There are some things you need to know and I’m not going to leave until that happens.”
Oliver just needed to know that Sara was okay - that she she was alright being by herself without her timeline crew.
Her shoulders tensed as Oliver pointed out they needed to talk. Sara wasn’t exactly a fan of being ordered around, something that hadn’t changed after she came back to life. She did what she wanted and once upon a time hadn’t cared how it hurt people. God, she had made some stupid mistakes in her life. She glanced up at her friend with a clear frown on her face.
“I can make you move,” she pointed out as she crossed her arms over her chest. The once assassin didn’t want to talk about her feelings. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true, she didn’t want to talk at this exact moment. Her hands itched to bring destruction to the mass of undead brain munchers outside the prison walls. Oliver clearly didn’t seem to care.
No, he wanted to chat.
“You are going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?” She gave him a once over before rolling some ideas around in her head. It was so tempting to just sweep his legs out from under him and just walked right out. The problem was she respected Ollie too much to just land his ass on the ground. Slowly she forced her shoulder to relax before turning to walk over to a chair. She spun the chair around so she could straddle it as she rested her arms across the back.
“Speak,” she waved a hand through the air with as much indifference as she could conjure up.
She was hardly indifferent. She was more worried about what he had to say. No one from her crew was around to distract her, but she didn’t exactly need them. Sara liked to think she was doing just fine here, even if she was a tad on the violent side lately.
“And I can stop you,” he countered, not backing down because Oliver wasn’t the type of person who just did that willingly. He knew that he was stubborn and abrasive but at the same time he did the things he wanted to knowing that he was in the right. Right now Oliver was in the right about wanting to make sure that Sara was okay. As much as the eldest Lance didn’t want to do that Oliver wasn’t going to give her much of a choice. At least not until he said what he needed to.
When Sara gave in it was Oliver’s chance to take a deep breath, hands on his hips as he stood there for a moment, maybe a little too long for Sara’s taste but there were things that he couldn’t just say out loud without thinking them through. He didn’t know how to lessen the blow when it came to Quentin and remembering the way his dead body looked surrounded by his only living daughter and the Laurel Lance from Earth 2.
A part of him couldn’t even understand it. Why was it always them that suffered the most from lost? Losing Sara was monumental but so was losing Laurel. Somehow he had lost all of them at one point and there was no going back from this. There was no saving Quentin.
“It’s your father,” Oliver began, swallowing deeply as he fought for the words but they came swiftly because deep down Sara was only going to hear it all one way. “I’m sorry Sara but...Quentin is dead. He was killed.”
Murdered was what he wanted to say but he didn’t want to talk about the man responsible for putting a bullet in her father. Laurel had already taken care of him although Oliver had his doubts when it came to that. He had a feeling that Diaz had survived his fall from the rooftop even after being blasted off of it.
There were many things Ollie could have said, but what left his mouth was something she wasn’t prepared for. The part that really got her was the fact Rip had told her if she hadn’t gone on her time travel trip than she, her dad, and her sister all would have died together. That wasn’t fair. She had left. Laurel and her dad still ended up dead.
“Excuse you?”
There was this roaring sound in her ears as she stared at her friend. The words were still bouncing around her head as she tried to digest the thought.
Dad was dead.
“Killed? Who killed my father? Why didn’t you stop them?” The words were tossed out in anger as she pushed herself up off the chair violently. The poor piece of furniture clattered to the ground as she stood there with her hands clenched at her sides. “Where you there? Jesus, Ollie. When did this happen?” The cracks in her anger were showing as her eyes started to glisten with tears.
“Take it back,” she whispered. “Take it back,” she said a little louder as she turned away from him. Dad couldn’t be dead.
No. He wasn’t there. There was no way for him to be because this wasn’t how they planned it. Oliver kept his composure. He blocked out his feelings because they were personal. It had hurt so much to feel what he felt, to know how Quentin had seen him, the way that he had felt about Oliver before dying. They were family and in some ways Oliver saw the former detective as a father. Quentin had confessed that he saw Oliver as his son and now...he was dead. “He saved Laurel,” he said, explaining what had happened from his perspective. “Everything that he did was to make sure this other Laurel survived. The Laurel Lance from Earth Two who was captured by Ricardo Diaz. He probably would have killed her if it wasn’t for Quentin. All he wanted was to make sure he didn’t lose someone else.”
As much as Oliver felt for Sara’s father he knew that there was no stopping him. There was no way to have guessed that he would used himself as a means to bargain with DIaz. They had luckily been able to trace his pacemaker but in the end it didn’t matter. Oliver couldn’t save him from his own fate.
“I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing for something he didn’t do because yes, Oliver felt guilty. He knew he would always feel this way for not doing more, for not guessing that saving Laurel would have been the top priority instead of taking out Diaz.
She wanted to be furious, angry, something. Her dad had died saving Laurel, but not their Laurel. How was that fair? She had nothing really against Earth Two Laurel. She was kind of glad she existed since she lost her actual sister. She just hadn’t wanted her dad to die. Sara rubbed her lower face with a hand as she stared at the wall as if it held all the secrets of the world.
Dad was dead.
Then came the words she didn’t want to hear. Sara whirled around and pointed a finger at Oliver. “Don’t. Saying that makes it real, Ollie. I don’t want it to be real.” She wanted her dad to be able to pick up the phone when she called. She wanted him to make his remarks about her life style, but God. Most of all she wanted to be able to go get one last milkshake with him. There was this intense burning sensation that was building behind her eyes and she was trying so hard to fight it.
“Laurel knows? I’m guessing she knows. That would explain some things…”
Sara stepped closer to Oliver and schooled her face into one of determination. “We get revenge. When we get out of here I mean. I want to get the man who killed my father. Make him suffer.”
“You know killing Diaz isn’t going to change anything.” He knew where that sort of vengeance came from. Oliver had wanted it, too. He had been so desperate for it when he had watched Slade kill his own mother. It was a promise of the death that was supposed to rain down on him but somehow through it all Oliver had managed to find himself forgiving it. He pushed through it and instead of killing Slade they came to an agreement. The past was the past and Oliver didn’t want for Sara to go down that path. Not again.
“I’ve been there. You know I have. Slade killed my mom and all I wanted was to finish what I started but you know that killing someone else isn’t going to bring him back.” Oliver wasn’t going to let Sara destroy herself in the process because in the end, if they did get out of here and did go back to their world then Sara would just be killing a piece of herself.
“Right now you have someone here who could use your help. Laurel doesn’t know what to do with herself and maybe...there is some good in her. I’ve seen it. She wants to change and maybe you and I can help her get there. We can’t leave her alone out there.” Oliver wanted to desperately find that spark inside of Laurel Lance that would set her down a different path, too. He knew that she was probably grieving in her own way but he didn’t know how to help her.
Sara wanted to be stubborn and not listen to him. Some part of her knew that Oliver was right. Killing the murderer of her dad wouldn’t change anything, but another part of her wanted to turn the ground red. An anger was bubbling up inside of her and it would only be satisfied if she destroyed the person who had tried to destroy her life.
Killing him wouldn’t bring her dad back, but it would make her feel something.
That monster inside of her was screaming for blood and Diaz’s sounded amazing.
The mention of Laurel was like a slap to the face. She winced faintly before crossing her arms over her chest. God, way for Ollie to use a guilt trip! “So what’s the plan,” she finally said. “Forcing Laurel into the prison won’t work. She is stubborn, no matter the Earth.”
Yes, Sara was focusing on the new problem and completely not dealing with the death of father.
She needed to go out into the projects and visit Laurel. Earth 2 Laurel was still a version of her sister. Oliver was right, damn him, they did need to help her. She had been failing at that.
“No, it might not work but we can’t give up on her.” Oliver didn’t want to abandon her. He hated to admit it but he saw something in her the night he went to Quentin’s. He wasn’t sure what he noticed but it was enough to realize that maybe some part of their Laurel was somewhere inside of her. Oliver knew that their personalities weren’t the same but their Earths weren’t entirely different. At some point or another the timelines had changed but Laurel was still Laurel. She was still that girl he loved in some way or another. The Oliver that she knew had died just like the Laurel he knew was dead.
“You don’t have to see her as your sister,” he reminded, not wanting for Sara to replace the Laurel that they knew, at least not by choice of her own. Oliver wasn’t trying to force that. He knew that Sara could come to her own feelings all by herself. “But she’s Laurel.”
He wasn’t going to tell her what to do. If Sara wanted to help Laurel then he would support her, just like he expected for her to support him if he made the choice to reach out to her. Right now seemed like a good time to do so. It was better to get themselves on her side before something else happened. “We let her have that choice.” Oliver knew that Sara was right about Laurel being stubborn but they weren’t going to be there to drag her kicking and screaming to the prison.
“I know,” she retorted. “Wasn’t planning on it. Nothing can replace Laurel, my Laurel.” Sara wasn’t looking to replace her sister. That wasn’t something she would actually consider, no matter the pain she felt for the loss of her family members. She did want to at least try and get to know the Laurel that was here.
She reached up and smoothed her blonde locks back from her face as she frowned. After a moment she settled on yanking her hair back into a severe ponytail. The hairstyle reflected her mood; serious and not leaving room for anything fun to happen.
“We will figure it out, one way or another.”
Sara could still feel some burning behind her eyes. Tears that were threatening to spill out, but she was made of sterner stuff. Well she liked to think she was made of sterner stuff. She had shed her share of tears and she would probably shed more. Now just wasn’t the time. Sara had come up with her new motto to embrace. Cry later. Survive now.
“I think...I need a drink, Ollie. A trip to the projects is in order.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Oliver chuckled, his thumb rubbing against his right temple as he realized that maybe he needed a drink too. Oliver didn’t run out into the projects a lot but he knew a place that he had gone to before. It didn’t seem that unsafe and even if it was he knew that Sara was more than capable of taking out a few drunk patrons.
It was going to take time. All of it. Oliver knew that Laurel could only come around on her own. He wondered how she was fairing by herself but remembered that this wasn’t just Laurel Lance - it was Black Siren, too..Black Siren who was an expert vigilante and a killer all in her own right.
“Come on. I’ll go with you.” He wasn’t a heavy drinker. Oliver did it mostly to celebrate but living in Everett had changed his views on drinking some and a vampire roommate had introduced him to the finer taste of bourbon that Oliver was in desperate need for.