Disclaimer: I do not own Arrow or the Green Arrow comics, I am just playing with the characters because I'm not all that happy with the show's writing.
A/N: I'm posting this at a M rating because I'm paranoid and this is intended to be dark. Not as dark as some of the things I've read on this sight, but lots of characters will be dying. I don't get explicit, but read at your own risk. This work was inspired by an interview Katie Cassidy gave as to some of her head cannon for Black Siren as well a work Andrus Tolero once had up on the site about Black Siren. Forewarning - death of child in this chapter.
Spark
Dinah Laurel Lance never planned on being the villain. When she was a young girl, she dreamed of standing in the light and fighting for justice. She wanted to be a detective just like her father, or perhaps a lawyer. Those dreams bled away one frigid winter night on a road outside Starling City.
From one loss to another, Dinah Laurel Lance descended into darkness. She didn't wake up one morning and say, "Screw the world and let it burn." Instead she lost her humanity piece by piece, equalizing at each new depth without even realizing what she was doing, what she was losing. When she finally looked up, she only saw the darkness of the waters above and a face in the mirror young Dinah Laurel Lance wouldn't have recognized. By that point, she no longer cared.
BC-BS-BC-BS
The year Dinah Laurel Lance turned ten, she began her campaign to go camping. Laurel, as she preferred to be called back then, had heard stories about camping from several her grade school friends and the trips had sounded very fun. Her seven- soon-to-be eight-year-old sister, Sara, was easily swayed to the idea with the promise of s'mores and roaring campfires.
Convincing their parents took more effort with their mother seeking tenure and their father a very busy detective; time appeared to be the greatest obstacle. Laurel persisted in her campaign with detailed research into the educational benefits of exploring the great outdoors and liberal use of Sara's puppy eyes. Finally, just before the new school year began, their parents caved in and agreed to a weekend in the nearest campground.
They bought a tent, sleeping bags, and a couple of coolers for food. Quentin Lance also bought two fishing rods for Laurel and Sara as a surprise, intending to teach them how to fish the way his father had taught him. The promised weekend approached, the bags were packed into the family's station wagon, and then the bodies dropped, quite literally.
A triple homicide including a major drug dealer in the Glades had Quentin pulling extended tours, trying to track down the killer before a drug war began. He had just enough time to stop by the house and wish his girls a good trip before heading in to work overtime that weekend. Dinah Lance brought her daughters home the next morning; their hearts weren't in the trip without Quentin and she wasn't particularly experienced at putting up tents.
After the fiasco of her first camping trip, Laurel lost interest in the endeavor. She stopped her campaign and ignored the stories her schoolmates told, what did they know anyway? Quentin never caught his killer; he found the culprit but not the evidence needed to put the man away and instead a new, more dangerous drug cartel started taking over the Glades with ruthless efficiency.
Life went in the Lance household. Quentin managed to return to normal tours, though his workload only seemed to increase. He succeeded in taking down a few of the new drug dealers, putting pressure on their operation, and he continued his pursuit of the killer leading them. Dinah Lance earned her tenure but had to take on a night class at the request of her department head, which kept her out of the house most nights of the week. At school, camping stories faded as new rumors about the return of a masked vigilante spread like wildfire – a blonde-haired woman in black who defended the helpless and waged war on the drug cartels with the help of the police.
December reached them before Laurel knew it and Sara was a bouncing ball of anticipation, she had all sorts of birthday wishes and was impatient to know what she was getting. The last weekend before break and a little over a week before Sara's birthday, the Lance sisters arrived home on Friday to a surprise. Quentin had wrangled to get the entire weekend off and had found a small cabin for the whole family to share in a campground only a few hours away.
They had a roaring fire in the cabin's fireplace, hot chocolate, and s'mores with late night ghost stories. Quentin even took Sara and Laurel ice fishing on a nearby pond; they didn't get any bites, but then there were no fish in the pond. Dinah had to head back into the city early, she had a large stack of term papers to grade, but this trip was exactly what Laurel had dreamed. She imagined camping the next summer would be just as fun and her parents promised they would try to make that dream happen as well.
Sunday afternoon arrived much too soon, but they had only half a week left of school and Sara's birthday party and Christmas to look forward to. Laurel watched the winter-covered trees shuffle by and smiled as she remembered the snow-family they'd built near the cabin. Sara chattered away at her favorite toy bear, talking about the gifts she was hoping to receive while trying to watch her dad for a reaction. Quentin was laughing on the inside at Sara's antics as he turned up the radio so that they could all listen to some Christmas music on the drive home.
"Can I have some peanuts?" Laurel asked as the sun began to set on the horizon.
"Can you?" Quentin retorted, and Laurel huffed before correcting herself; "May I have some peanuts?"
"I want a snack too," Sara declared as Quentin handed the bag of peanuts back.
"What do you want Sar-bear?"
"I'm not sure," Sara unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned forward, the better to see into the bag of goodies on front passenger seat.
"Sara, sit back down and put your seatbelt on," Quentin instructed in his commanding voice. He glanced back at his youngest for only a second, to show her he was serious but not upset with her. Sara harrumphed and sat back down.
Everything that happened afterward, happened too quickly for Laurel to process in detail. The car shook, and metal screeched against metal. Quentin cursed and fought against the wheel. Sara and Laurel screamed. The car spun off the road, hit the curb just right, and flipped topside into the ditch.
Glass broke, then shattered. The car rolled twice before landing wheels down at the bottom of the ditch. Laurel's ears were ringing. She felt something warm trickling down her face. She couldn't catch her breath. Her fingers scrabbled with her belt buckle before she finally clicked her free. The taunt belt retracted and the pressure on her chest disappeared. Laurel inhaled deeply, her mind still reeling. She thought she might get sick and turned, trying to find the window.
She found the door handle and decided that would do. She had to push her shoulder into the door to get in open, then toppled to her knees as soon as she stepped outside. The ground was black and red and white and cold, but the cold helped clear some of the fogginess out of her brain. The black was dirt, the white snow, and red was the streaks of blood she was leaving. Everything hurt, and her mind was still sluggish, but she was alive and that was good.
Then Quentin was in front of her, grabbing ahold of her arm and gingerly touching her head near a sore spot; "Laurel sweetie, are you alright? Laurel?" He had a large cut on his cheek and the knuckle on his left hand was swelling larger each second, but his concern was for her not himself.
"'m fine, I'm fine," Laurel grabbed her dad's uninjured hand and squeezed hard; "What about Sara?" Laurel turned to look back into the car, but Sara wasn't in the backseat. Her side door wasn't opened, but she wasn't there; "Daddy, where's Sara?"
They found Sara lying nearly ten yards back from the car. She'd landed in pristine snow, but the edges around her were darkening with blood. Her left leg was twisted at an unnatural angle and she didn't seem to be breathing right. Laurel wanted to pick her little sister up and cradle her, but Quentin wouldn't let her. He had her hold Sara's hand while he went back to the car for a sleeping bag to help keep her warm and the cell phone they kept for emergencies.
"You're going to be okay Sar-bear, you hear me," Laurel whispered, squeezing her sister's hand tightly, but Sara remained unconscious. Quentin was returning with the blanket and cell phone when Laurel heard car doors slam on the road above them; "Do you hear that Sara, helps coming and so is Daddy."
Three men slide down the hillside, but they didn't come to help. Even from a distance, Laurel could see they carried guns and that they were ready to shoot. She squeaked at Quentin as he was covering Sara in the blanket and he turned to look. His hand went for his waist, where he normally wore his service weapon, but he was off the job and there was no weapon for him there. He dove for his ankle and pulled out the pistol he holstered there, but the men were upon them at that point.
"Please, leave my daughters out of this, they're just children," Quentin begged, standing between his girls and the three men with ice in their eyes. His pistol never wavered from the leader.
"We have no interest in your children Detective, lower your weapon and they won't be harmed, further," the leader said, the smallest and coldest of the men.
Quentin took one glance back at his daughters and complied. The men took Quentin's gun and pulled him back to the car. One of the men stayed next to Laurel and held her down with a hand on her shoulder. Laurel held onto Sara's hand tightly, knowing she should do something, but not sure what she could do that would help. She watched on helplessly as the other two men tied Quentin up and covered him with gasoline.
"Why are you doing this? Do you really want to start a war with SCPD?" Quentin choked out hoarsely, afraid but defiant.
"This has nothing to do with you being a cop, Detective Lance. This is a message for your wife," the leader replied mockingly. Then he lit three matches and dropped them down Quentin's shirt.
Laurel screamed and jerked away from the hand on her shoulder. She made it three steps before the man yanked her back and forced her to her knees. She scratched and kicked and bit at him, but he clocked her upside the head and left her too dizzy to do anything but watch. Her father howled and convulsed as he was burned alive.
The three men left once Quentin stopped shrieking and moving. They left Laurel to crawl back to Sara and grab her sister's hand with trembling fingers. Her breath started misting in front of her and she whispered to her baby sister to stay strong. Night fell, and Sara's breathing grew more ragged. Laurel shivered from the swiftly dropping temperatures but refused to leave her post. She could not look at the blackened mess that was left of her father, so she focused on her sister.
Sara's hand was ice in Laurel's but then both their hands were cold, so she didn't think anything of it. The blood around Sara stopped spreading, which Laurel thought might have been a good thing. Then Sara stopped breathing and Laurel didn't know what to do.
She held onto Sara's hand as tears poured down her face. Soft sobs racked her body. Sara never woke up.
A/N 2: Huh, hadn't realized it's been nearly two years since I last posted - had to join the real world as an adult which sapped away my creativity for a long time. This story is set to have ten chapters. Most have already been written - I wanted to make sure I would complete this story before I posted it, this way my muse is more cooperative. I will only be posting one chapter a week until I get the last written, after that I'll probably put the whole story up in a couple of days. Please review if you like, contain any criticism to legitimate development issues and ways I could better my writing, do not post hate just because I'm creating a backstory you'd don't like.