Disclaimer: I do not own LOT or any of the characters. If I did, Laurel wouldn't be dead.
This is absolutely insane.
But insane is what her life has become anyway, ever since her dad started dating her ex's ex's mother. That woman, God bless her heart, has no respect for boundaries, and after being dragged to hair spas and shopping all the while talking about men and love and Oliver, she really can't take any more and is in a desperate need to run away.
And so, Dinah Laurel Lance takes in a deep breathe and closes the car door with a soft thud. "I can't believe I'm doing this."
"I can't believe you're doing this either," Leonard drawls, a tiny bit irritated at the fact that he will have someone constantly barking over his shoulder, telling him not to break the law, and starts the engine with a hasty jerk.
Sara eyes her sister with a little skepticism and a lot of pride. She has always been the rebel daughter who hangs out with delinquents, not Laurel. This is so unlike her, and she's so glad Laurel is doing this. "This is great. The last time Laurel and I took a trip together, I was a dead body in a bag."
Mick looks back from the passenger seat to stare at Laurel admiringly. His infatuation with her is growing like a wildfire- untamed and beautiful. "You've gotta teach me how to carry a dead body in the trunk of a car without getting busted by a cop."
"You don't have a car," Laurel points out.
"I don't have a dead body either, sweetheart, but you've gotta make plans for the future," Mick counters, and changes the topic completely without warning. "The first thing I'm gonna do when I get to Vegas is hit the casinos."
Laurel crosses her arms in front of her. "You mean rob the casinos."
"No need," Leonard answers confidently. "I haven't found a card game yet where I couldn't win."
"You mean cheat," Sara corrects, mimicking the condescending posture and facial expressions of her sibling.
Leonard catches a glimpse of her glare in the rear-view mirror, and smirks.
And just like that, the four unlikely group of friends fall into a comfortable silence, the first real silence Laurel has enjoyed in the weeks since the advent of Donna Smoak.
Two hours later
"This is taking too long," Mick grumbles when he is awakened from his five minute nap by a rude bump in the road. "We should have taken the WaveRider."
Leonard and Sara both glare at him incredulously.
Laurel speaks for all of them. "You insisted on not taking the WaveRider."
"Because you're not used to the side-effects of time travel," Mick answers with a grin, proud at himself for being so thoughtful and gentlemanly, and expecting to impress her.
Leonard and Sara exchange their typical look, one that asks "Would you tell him or should I?" As if via a telepathic game of tag-you're it, they decide it's Leonard's turn to break it to him. "This isn't time travel. It's just travel. No side-effects."
"Oh," Mick deflates, his grin turning into a pout. "So no thank-you then?"
Laurel shakes her head, but that misplaced whiny expression on the face of an otherwise big and scary man brings a smile to her face. She looks out of her window, catching her first glimpse of the famous Vegas sign, lit up brightly against an equally brightly lit up cityscape. Truth be told, she's so looking forward to this now.
At Vegas
The clinking of coins, the beeping of machines, and the sound of people's voices and cheers- it's Vegas alright. Leonard makes himself at home at the Blackjack table, Mick finds a slot machine and keeps losing the money he 'borrowed' from Ray. Sara and Laurel stand at a corner, Laurel watching the men, Sara browsing the catalog for a show that's up to their speed. Laurel isn't drinking, as per the rules of her recovery, and Sara isn't killing, as per the rules of hers, so they might as well make the best of this trip through other forms of entertainment.
Two young and attractive women can stand alone in Vegas without drawing people's attention for only so long. Laurel catches the eye of a man wearing a jacket shinier than wrapping papers and a wig that looks like corn. He walks up to the two of them and offers Laurel a glass of champagne. She politely declines, he insists, and Sara gets ready to do her thing.
"Back off, she said no," Sara warns, with a glare in her eye to show she means it.
Laurel places a hand on her shoulder to hold her back. "It's fine, Sara, I've got this."
Her definition of "I got this" is a little different from that of her sister. She believes in using words as weapons as long as the use of arms isn't necessary, and this man is not going to get a violent reaction from her.
The man smiles at her, wrongly encouraged. "Well, if you don't want a drink, maybe I can interest you in dinner? I hear the seafood here is délicieux I like my oysters sweet, by the way. Sweet and juicy."
By then, the men have noticed this unwanted attention, and have been standing by, watching, knowing the ladies can handle it themselves, but ready to provide backup if the need arises, and honestly, itching to do just so. Leonard has been holding Mick back from setting the man on fire, or worse, but he finally roars. "Listen, you giant tub of-"
"Let him talk, Mick," Laurel interrupts, as calm and collected as she is in a courtroom, "Nothing he can say is gonna affect me one way or the other."
"Well in that case," the man pauses to give Mick a good disapproving look-over, "Perhaps you won't mind explaining how a lovely young lady like you ended up with a nobody like him. Were all the real men in your city already taken?"
Laurel's fist connects with the man's stomach before she even realizes she's punching someone. Her eyes widen and her lips part in shock at the realization that she just defended Mick. And started a public brawl. In a casino. Filled with thugs and armed guards.
Sara looks on in a mixture of disbelief and pride, before she throws in a punch too like she has wanted to for so long, and Leonard and Mick follow suit when the man's mini-army joins them. Three minutes later, the men are all on the ground, or silently retreating, and the security guards are coming for them. Laurel is still frozen in shock.
"We need to go," Leonard says urgently. "I love a good fight as much as the next guy, but I can't get arrested. I already have ten warrants pending on me, and that's in this state alone."
Laurel doesn't budge. She may have quit her day job, but she's still pretty darn good at what she does for a living. She crosses her arms stubbornly. "I'm a lawyer, I can handle this."
"We need to go now," Leonard repeats, and without giving her a moment to decide, grabs her hand and drags her out of the casino.
She's not sure if this is a good idea- they left their car at the hotel, and they are not going much further on foot. "We are going to get caught. Can't we just-"
Leonard stops her by throwing a helmet at her, which she catches with a yelp. "No time, drive," he explains briefly, motioning at the bike by her side.
"You can't be serious." She can't believe she is about to add stealing a vehicle to the list of crimes she's committing, that too on a single day.
Leonard jacks another bike and Sara perches herself behind him, and they leave without argument. Mick grabs a helmet and waits for her. "You coming, pretty bird?"
Laurel takes a look behind her. The guards are closing in on them, and they do not look happy. In a rare moment of impulsive decision that she will later blame on temporary insanity, she decides to run. "I'll drive," she tells him decisively, and takes her place as the rider. She's able to start the engine and get them out of there just in the nick of time.
Following Leonard's bike, she drives them into a tunnel.
Of all the things Mick admires about her, her driving isn't one of them. He hugs her waist, not because he wants to cop a feel, but because he is scared for his life at the turns and the zig-zags she makes, and the way she tilts the bike like she's about to do a stunt. "Are we dead yet?" he asks, forcing his eyes shut tightly.
"No."
A minute later, he repeats, "Are we dead yet?"
"Look, if we die, I promise to let you know," Laurel snaps back, silencing Mick.
Five minutes later, in the abandoned tunnel, the four manage to catch their breathe and regroup. Once the adrenaline wears off, the full realization of the laws she has broken hits Laurel. She just assaulted a man, started a public brawl, aided and abetted fugitives, stole a vehicle, resisted and evaded arrest. She takes a look at the others, expecting them to be at least a little bit bothered by the events, but instead finds them grinning at each other like loons. "You guys look like it's Christmas. Do you do this every day?"
"Not every day," Leonard comments.
"On good days," Mick adds.
"I can't believe I punched a guy," Laurel mumbles to herself.
"I can't believe it either," Leonard echoes, before the three of them break into laughter.
"That's one more place we are banned from," Mick comments when they sober up a bit. "Thank God we have a time ship. We can come back here in 2012. Those Vegans can't stop us."
"Vegans?" Sara asks, confused.
Mick rolls his eyes like it's obvious. "Yeah, you know, like Americans."
Sara opens her mouth to correct him, shakes her head and decides against it, and finally clicks it shut with a pop. She takes a look at her sister, who has been quiet for so long, and finds her smiling.
Laurel too notices that she's smiling. This may be crazy, and this may be felony. But this may just be exactly what she needed. Someone once told her 'We don't get what we want, we get what we need.' She's starting to see it now.
A/N: I posted this a long time back to tumblr. Took me this long to get a working laptop and cross-post here lol. Hope you liked it :)
