Title: Dancing Through Fire
Words: 2048
Genre: Action
Character: Laurel Lance
Status: Done
Summary: Laurel gets injected with mirakuru by a street thug to wake up in a new place which helps her control her new powers and then she goes for her first day on the job as the black canary.
Thinking back to her life before, she wondered what she ever liked about it. She took everyone's crap. She argued it. She helped them to their path. They were grateful sure, but they never showed that. The help was never mutual. She was so scared of losing that image of the perfect darling lawyer daughter and woman of the people that she didn't rock the boat too much until it mattered and then people looked shocked.
No matter how much she'd been through, people were shocked that she could make a fuss about the injustices of the world.
She trusted widely and openly and that had also been to her detriment. People took her heart out of her chest and threw it in the ocean, shot it up with arrows, shoved it into glass cases, put it up on a pedestal, and dropped it from planes. Where she felt all of that injustice done to her, she'd lashed out.
So now, when another villain, another evil human being had her by the throat, shoved up against a wall, she took a deep breath and remembered exactly as she had been told, just remember to sing. She jabbed her elbow into his solar plexus and got away for a minute. She started to run when another large man stood in the way of her escape. Laurel went to push the heel of her hand into his nose, but he grabbed her by the wrist and he jabbed some kind of needle in her throat.
She cried out and she hadn't thought that it would do anything other than give her a small amount of relief from the pain that she was feeling, except it did. The man dropped to the ground and she ran. She ran as fast as she could, and stumbled into someone. "Whoa, you're gonna be okay," They said as she faded out from pain. She thought it was all a dream.
When she regained consciousness, she immediately wanted to run and saw a lab tech, "Hey there, sleeping beauty, I'm Danielle and we're not here to hurt you," She told Laurel.
"Where am I?" Laurel asked.
Danielle nodded for her to come with her. They got out of the little white room that Laurel had with a bed and machines hooked up and went to a big open gym with a few other people who were accompanied by people in labcoats. "We help people who get jabbed with serums."
Laurel looked at Danielle really for the first time, her bright pink hair was pulled up away from her face and she wore small black framed glasses. "You're saying what that guy was real and that cry that hurt him was me?" She asked.
Danielle chuckled. "Yep, that was you. That serum was mirakuru, but for some reason, it reacted differently with you than everyone else. Might be a hormone thing though."
"So what now? Am I stuck here?" Laurel asked. She was itching to get out and see the world and Danielle could see that.
Danielle smiled to her. "We're not going to keep you here. We don't have some rule about going outside. It's your life and you do with it what you want, but we're here to help you."
This struck a cord because for everything that she had done in her life, no one said those words. No one said we're here to help you. No one cared enough. They all said I love you. They all said, we want to help you, but no one ever followed through. And Danielle, she seemed nice enough. She took a chance on someone she clearly didn't have to.
"Where do we start, Danielle?" She asked.
Danielle looked down at her clipboard, "Well, let's start by testing your strength," She said as she took Laurel over to some dumb bells and started with fifty on each side, a 100 total, a pretty modest weight for someone with mirakuru injected in them.
Laurel picked them up like they were pieces of paper. Same with 200. Same with 300. She started to get a little stressed out at 400 and screamed at 500, which broke the glass available.
"What the hell was that?" Laurel asked Danielle who had covered her ears and cowered away.
Danielle looked relieved when Laurel looked confused. "That was the thing that happened while you were trying to escape. Why we could help you." She said. "The mirakuru was injected into your throat and vocal cords. And it seems to be giving you a supersonic screech essentially."
"God, that's so cool." Laurel looked excited.
Danielle had seen that look in Laurel's eyes, many a time, she was practically a pro at this. "You know, you have a life outside of your body that you need to keep in mind," She told Laurel, "But you could be someone really great to a lot of people."
"I want to keep working." She nodded to Danielle. "My city needs me. My city needs justice, but if this has meant anything to me, it's that the system fails people and I intend to protect them."
Danielle showed her to a room where she could practice her cry. "We figured you might be one of the ones who wanted to do something with your power," Danielle told her, "So this room was created for you. Kennedy will be your teacher. She's something of an expert at focusing energy."
Laurel nodded to Danielle. "Well, she's no Diana, but I think I can work with her," Kennedy said as she looked Laurel up and down. "You can go, Danielle. We'll take care of it from here."
Working with Kennedy was tough but Laurel liked it. She liked the challenge of someone who didn't believe in her, because it just meant she had time to prove her worth.
And Kennedy was fair on that point. She liked to be impressed but she also understood where Laurel came from and where she got her power. And when she hit a target with her cry, she did an excited little jump and Kennedy nodded her head and smiled. Kennedy smiled. She actually smiled.
That was big because Kennedy never smiled. "I think you're ready, Lance." She told Laurel. "You ready to be out there?"
She saw the shattered target and nodded to her. "I am," She told Kennedy. "Thank you for doing this for me," She said, because Kennedy had been an excellent teacher in all of this but it was time to make it out on her own.
"Don't thank me, Lance. I hope you get your ass kicked and come back. You might be ready, but there have been plenty people who were ready who needed more training."
Barrel of monkeys that one. She thought as she shook her head and gathered her things. She stopped into Danielle's office who smiled. "You leaving us?" She asked.
"For now," Laurel nodded.
Danielle got up from her desk and hugged Laurel. "I hope you do great out there,"
"I'm sure I will. Thanks to you." She smiled.
Danielle shook her head. "All I did was tell you the truth. You decided to stay here and hone your skills. You did all the work."
"You still helped." Laurel acknowledged. If she hadn't been here, she didn't know what she would have done. New powers. New strength. A system that failed her.
Danielle nodded her head. "I have a present for you." She said and opened a drawer. She took out several pieces of cloth and smiled. "Since you want to be one of the heros, figured you might need this."
"A costume?" She asked as she unfolded all of the pieces. It was pants and a top that were easy to fight in and a mask.
Danielle smiled again. "You might need a wig. That hair's kind of distinctive. You also need a place to figure out who to go after. But after that, you're ready to go."
"What do you do with the ones who don't end up like me? Who don't want to help?" Laurel asked. They were so giving to her, but she couldn't think about what if the situation had been reversed.
Danielle spun around. "We try to help them understand why they have that anger and resentment inside of them and we try to help them control it. Ultimately, it's their choice, we're just the conduits."
Laurel left the palace that had given her literally everything with her powers and went back to Starling City to find it just as she had left it. Dirty and corrupt, with the ones with the power trying to keep it and the ones who didn't have it, wanting a little piece of it.
Laurel went to the first wig store she found and bought a bleach blond wig and a way to keep it on even during heavy activity. She smiled at it. This was going to be awesome. Now, she just had to find her first target.
She took to the rooftops and put on the costume and looked for someone and then she realized that she came to where she'd been jabbed in the throat and true to form there were people who were stabbing and people who were being stabbed.
She jumped in, "Hi boys," She said as she waved.
They were momentarily confused, but she just smiled and roundhouse kicked the first, who went down, but the second one tried to grab her. She stepped on his toes and put an elbow in his groin. "You bitch!" He said as his buddy grabbed her.
She looked at her victim, "Go, save yourself, kid, I'm gonna be fine."
"Oh, you're not gonna be fine, cunt. You're gonna suffer."
The kid looked confused and Laurel just nodded to her. "I promise you, you'll see me again, okay?" She asked.
The kid nodded and she smiled. "Well, boys, it's just the two of you against me," She told him.
"Yeah, and you're gonna see God tonight," He said as he punched her in the stomach.
RAAAAAAAAAGH. Laurel let out and she could see the ears bleeding. She could see them cowering. They let her go and she stepped on one's throat, "Don't you ever call me a cunt again," She told him, "Because you will regret it." She seethed.
"Oliver who is that?" She heard a comm. She looked around.
The arrow looked to her and she grinned. "Miss me, sweetie?"
"You're back?" He asked with a look of shock. He always looked so surprised when it was someone other than him.
She smiled wider, from side to side. "And better than ever." She told him as she flipped out of the way.
"Oliver, who is it? Digg's getting worried that it might be the crazy person we all know and love?" Felicity babbled in his ear.
He looked to her. "What are you calling yourself?" He asked her. She couldn't exactly have people knowing her identity yet. But he'd tell the team when he got back.
She looked around the corner and saw the little girl she saved. "Why were you here?" She asked him as she went and checked out the girl. She seemed like she was doing okay.
"Those guys, they aren't exactly just rapists. They went after her for a reason." He told her. "So what's your name?" He asked.
She smoothed down the little girl's hair and smiled to her. "I'm gonna keep you safe." She promised.
"Name," He demanded of her.
"I'm the Black Canary," She beamed at him, because Helena was right, once you let the darkness in, it never came out, but that didn't mean it had to eat at you.
He looked her up and down, "I thought Sara took that name when she was here?" He asked.
She nodded. "And she danced through the flames of warriors to get it. I'll dance through the fire of setting the system right." She told him as she took the girl's hand and left him in the dust. This hero thing, it seemed like she might just be good at it.
She'd had a decent first day on the job and that's what it was all about right? Leaving to love saving the people.