A Dose of

Hard Reality

For Dinah

Disclaimer: I own nothing but what you see here. I had been thinking of this idea for awhile but it hadn't occurred to me that I could use it for the Dose of Reality series. Takes place during Salvation. And special thanks to Naitch03 once again as Past is Prologue is a big help in the making of stories like this.

Soon after Laurel had stormed out of the living room after realizing that her dad was apparently going to help her mother with the wild goose chase involving her long dead sister, a knock came at the front door. Frowning to herself as she wasn't expecting anyone at the moment, she went to it and checked the peep hole through the door. What she saw surprised her and then quickly opened the door. "Ollie? What, what are you doing here?" She asked confusedly and this was so not a good time for him to be here right now!

"Well Diggle and I had been on our way to Big Belly when your mother called me to come here." He informed her, much to her dismay as she had a feeling this could go very wrong.

"Laurel? Who is it honey?" Called out Quentin and wordlessly, the lawyer let Oliver and his bodyguard into her apartment.

She guided the two to her living room and Quentin was soon stunned to see the Queen punk here. "The Hell is he doin' here?"

"I asked him to come over Quentin." Informed Dinah, much to his shock.

"You what? Why would you do that for!?"

She looked at him for a moment. "Because I feel he can help us."

With the resources he likely had at his disposal, she felt it would make it so much easier in finding her babygirl and ending the long nightmare the Lance family were in. "Oh sure, let's get the punk who got our babygirl killed involved in this." Quentin replied sarcastically with some acid to his tone while throwing his hands up in the air as he still wasn't all that happy with how his whole case against him being the Hood had virtually went out the window after Queen decided to do a little share time during the interrogation.

Oliver didn't even so much as wince this time since there was no point in saying anything and Diggle just looked at him in sympathy. Laurel chose to keep quiet while her mother reprimanded her father. "Get involved in what exactly?" The archer finally decided to ask after witnessing the scene in front of him.

Dinah looked at him with hope in her eyes as she walked up to him after grabbing a picture off the table. "I believe Sara is alive." She figured that just going for it would be the best solution in all this.

The archer reared back from the revelation as he knew the truth but he did wonder if somehow if it was possible since she had survived the Gambit's sinking after all… "Um… What? You think she's alive?"

She nodded at him and then handed the picture of the girl over to him while Diggle looked on in concern over the turn of events.

Taking the picture from her, Oliver looked at it intently and he knew then and there that it wasn't Sara. Nothing of theirs had survived the Gambit's sinking and this girl looked nothing like her. Walking around Dinah and to a near by chair, he sat down heavily on it before looking at the picture and then putting it on the table. Everyone watched all this happen and Laurel was kind of worried he might wind up pulling a similar move on her mother like he did her father some time ago when the man thought him to be the Hood. Oliver breathed in deeply as he tried to rein in his emotions before doing anything else. "I… I can't help you." He finally said.

Quentin scoffed at that and muttered something particularly unpleasant but Dinah wasn't about to let it go that easily. "What? Why not? Surely with the resources at your disposal we can get her home quickly!"

"That's not it!"

"Then what could it possibly be!?" The woman demanded, desperately hoping it wasn't something horrible.

"Because the girl in that picture is NOT Sara!" He hadn't wanted to yell that, God knows he didn't but it just came out that way.

Dinah reared back in shock, refusing to believe what she'd just been told. "You're wrong! That's her in that picture! I know it is!"

She refused Quentin's attempts to be soothed as she continued to refuse to believe what Oliver Queen was telling her while Laurel and Diggle just looked on too stunned to do anything else. As for Oliver himself, he looked down at the floor as a debate raged within himself over what to do. Finally, he looked up at Dinah Lance with a sad look in his eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

The woman shook her head at him as the tears threatened to come down and told him he was wrong but he only shook his head in the negative in return. "She… She showed up the second year I was on the island..." The words came before he could stop them and he knew then and there that he had lost the war going on inside him but he wasn't going to tell them the full story since he had promised her.

"W-what? Ollie, what are you saying?" Asked Laurel and it was something Quentin was damn well wanting to know too.

"Sara… A freighter she was on came to the island." He had to close his eyes here in an effort to stop the memories that were trying to come to the fore front of his mind while the others watched on, each with a sinking feeling in their gut about what could have happened.

Laurel though had to wonder about it though, if her sister had shown up on the island at one point, why hadn't she or Ollie came back after that? Quentin was likewise thinking the same thing and both hoped the gut feeling they had was wrong. Diggle however, he had quickly figured that something must have gone really wrong after the girl showed up and he could see why the man would have lied about it. "If another boat came to the island, why isn't she home!? WHY!?"

Oliver looked at the woman again but quickly looked down as he could barely stand to look her in the eye cause of how hard this was. "Life was as harsh on that boat as it was on the island. Things… Happened..." He went quiet after that as the memories came in full force and Dinah caught the gist of what he was saying and she finally broke down and Quentin was quick to wrap her in his arms as tears of his own was falling while Laurel was doing the same due to the intensity of what was going on and some of the things she was thinking that might have happened and Diggle could only look on in sympathy at the scene before him and wishing he had stayed out in the hallway.

The archer wished he hadn't agreed to this and he knows now that its likely the Lances will hate him even more after this but he would deal with it as best he could. He softly spoke an apology that he wasn't really sure was even heard as the sounds of a heart broken woman continued to be heard. A phone call from Felicity several minutes later only made things worse as they witnessed a man by the name of John Nickel lose his life.