Fortune

"Good news," Thea announced offhandedly. "I'm no longer a pauper."

Laurel blinked as she glanced up from her burger, lowering it slightly so she could look at her younger friend more fully. Next to her, Barbara stopped audibly sipping her soda, while by Thea, Roy turned to his girlfriend. They were in the middle of lunch at the aptly-named Bat-Burger, a staple of Gotham ever since the Batman had become a fact of life in the city. Months after moving here, Laurel still wasn't sure how the outside world hadn't cottoned onto the fact that Batman was real when a place — a franchise — like this existed.

"What do you mean, Speedy?"

The younger woman shrugged. "Ollie managed to regain majority ownership of the company. We're back to being rich. He just messaged me telling me I have access to my accounts again."

Roy frowned. "Does that also mean he's back to being CEO?"

"Nah. The Board was willing to let him have ownership but they all agreed he was a terrible CEO. The job's going to some hotshot scientist named Ray Palmer instead."

"Good for you, and good for him, I guess," Laurel said shortly, before returning to her burger. She'd add some snide remark about how he could now continue being a jobless layabout, but that wasn't something to say to his baby sister — no matter how much they were all in agreement about what an ass he'd been lately. Besides, it wasn't even true. Just because Oliver didn't have a paying job didn't mean he wasn't working. She could at least give him that much credit, even if she couldn't give him credit for much of anything else.

Thea bobbed her head. "Yeah. While it was nice to know what it was like to live on the other side for a bit," and here, she shared an amused smile with Roy, "having money again is good. It means I can buy a place here in Gotham."

"Wait, what?" Laurel turned her attention back to Thea. "You're staying?"

That got her a sigh. "I don't know, Laurel," her younger friend admitted honestly. "I just want a place for Roy and I to stay while we're here, since your apartment is getting cramped. Whether or not that becomes my new home…" She swallowed, obviously unsure.

Her older friend couldn't fault her for that. Leaving Starling, the only home she — and Roy for that matter — had ever known was not an easy decision to make. Even with everything Thea had gone through these past several years, a part of her would always remain there, yearn to be there. Especially when her big brother was there as well. As badly as Oliver had been handling things lately, there was no question that he loved his sister. Likewise, as angry and disappointed Thea was with Ollie right now, she still loved him dearly.

It wasn't the same with Laurel. Her parents had long-since proven how little they cared about her, and Sara, the only family who still had any right to call herself Laurel's family, was as far from Starling as you could get, imprisoned in a hell that Laurel was desperately trying to free her from. No matter how much she had once loved Starling, that city had literally choked the life out of her. Thea and to a lesser extent Joanna were the only reasons she'd want to stay, and Laurel had come to the conclusion that she could still have them in her life without living in the same city as them.

"You don't need to decide now, Thea," Laurel said, before glancing to the sole male of their group. "Nor you, Roy. Just know that whatever you choose, as long as it makes you happy, I'll support you."

The young couple smiled. "Thanks, Laurel," Roy said, wrapping an arm around his girlfriend's shoulders.

"Yeah," Thea added, leaning against her boyfriend. "Thanks."

Wildcat

When Laurel began her training with Bruce, she found herself having more than one trainer. Both Dick and Jason partook in the training as well, acting as sparring partners for her to develop her skills. Being more experienced fighters, they won more often than not, but Laurel learned quick and the fights were getting closer and closer. She had already beaten Jason a few times, and a few more months she might even be capable of beating Dick.

What she hadn't expected, however, was to continue her training with Ted. She had dropped all her other martial arts classes to have more time to learn under Bruce, but the man himself had instructed her not to drop her classes with her boxing teacher. It wasn't until Ted appeared one day in the Bat-Cave to help Bruce with a case that she learned why.

"You trained Bruce?" Laurel asked him after a quick spar on the mats. They had been both surprised to see each other in the Cave, and after a round of introductions and explanations, had decided to see what they were both capable of without the rules of boxing to constrain them.

Ted chuckled and nodded towards his oldest student, who was perusing over a case on the Bat-Computer. "Yup. Was one of his first teachers. Kinda helped set him on the path to being a vigilante, truth be told — probably cause I used to be a vigilante myself."

"Really?" She couldn't keep the awe out of her voice.

Her mentor hummed and nodded. "Called myself Wildcat on the field," he explained. "I still have my old suit down in my office in the gym. I can show it to you sometime."

"I'd love to see it." Even though Laurel had no intentions of becoming a vigilante herself, she couldn't help but be impressed and fascinated by the operation Bruce and his team had going on down here. Learning more about their history, how they came to build all this, intrigued her more than she cared to admit.

It didn't help that Bruce was talking about her joining them in the field occasionally. He said she needed to get used to the atmosphere and environment of being in a real fight. Instincts, reactions, reflexes — they could be built up during training, but it was only in practical application that they could be refined. That was tacit knowledge that could only be learned through experience, as they said.

"What about you?" Ted asked her, breaking her out of her thoughts. "Thinking putting on a suit yourself one day?"

Laurel wrung her hands together. "I don't know," she admitted. "I guess that's something I'll have to decide after I get my sister back."

Because no matter what Sara said, Laurel was going to put her first. She had made the mistake of not doing so once before, and she was never going to make that mistake again. Everything else could wait.

Ted frowned but nodded thoughtfully. Laurel nearly sighed in relief.

Alternate

It took some discussion and a touch of cajoling, but eventually Laurel got Bruce to allow Roy to join in on their training sessions. Though he had put distance between Oliver and himself for Thea's sake, the younger man was still intent on becoming a vigilante in his own right. Laurel supported his aspirations fully and thought he could best achieve that by learning from the Bats alongside her.

The issue was that Bruce was notoriously cagey about his secret identity and the identities of his team. Laurel had made the cut only because she saved Jason's life and because Barbara had lobbied heavily for her. Thea and Roy, even with their experiences with Oliver, didn't have anywhere close to the same amount of goodwill, and it took Laurel and Babs both arguing for them for Bruce to finally relent and give them a modicum of his trust.

Both of her young friends had been surprised to learn about her familiarity with the resident vigilantes, less so after they learned the full story. They had questioned her decision to train with them, but once they learned it was to save Sara, all protests died on their lips. Roy in particular had wished he had known about the duel caveat earlier. "With the Mirakuru in me, I could've killed that Ra's guy and freed her," he had moaned in regret.

Laurel shook her head. "If they found out you had a super-soldier drug in you, they would've never considered the result of the duel valid," she told him. "According to Bruce, any physical enhancements are considered cheating. That's the only reason I haven't gone to free Sara yet."

That caused some of the weight on his shoulders to fall off. She gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, before guiding him over to the exercise equipment, where Thea was doing some pull-ups on the bar. Though she had no intentions of becoming a vigilante like Roy or learning hard combat like Laurel, recent events had shown her the importance of having some self-defense skills. So she was getting some lessons as well, though they were far less intense than Laurel and Roy's were.

"You know, I'm thinking I'm starting to like this," Thea announced as she dropped back down to the ground, Roy spotting her fall. She leaned into her boyfriend's arms once she was grounded again, and glanced up at his face with a smile. "We should consider getting our own home gym so we have a place to workout by ourselves."

Roy grinned. "I like the sound of that."

Patrol

For their first patrol, Bruce started them off small. He chose one of the nicer neighborhoods in Gotham and paired Laurel and Roy each off with one of his sons. Laurel and Dick were partnered together, and Jason and Roy were the other pair. The younger two men had hit it off very well and were quickly becoming very close friends, so she supposed it shouldn't be surprising.

Of course, 'nicer' in Gotham meant there wasn't a mugging happening every ten minutes — just every hour. Laurel had a lot of practice beating down all sorts of thugs of different shapes and sizes, learning about their different tells while Nightwing gave running commentary on the side. Sometimes it was constructive advice, other times it was a series of quips that swiveled between genuinely funny and horrifically groan-worthy.

She was giving him a good-natured roll of the eyes at one of those quips when she caught sight of a shadow moving atop the rooftops. Before Dick could say anything, Laurel was already climbing up the nearest fire escape with all the skill she could muster. In addition to martial arts, the Bats had opted to add parkour and acrobatics to her curriculum. It made Laurel wonder if they really were trying to railroad her into a career of vigilantism after Sara was saved liked Ted had suggested.

Once she made it to the roof, she found herself chasing after a woman in a skin-tight catsuit, carrying a whip of all things and a bag of clearly stolen diamonds. "Stop!" Laurel shouted, leaping over the gap between two buildings with one beautiful jump to land on the same rooftop as her quarry. The other woman turned around to face her and snapped her whip at Laurel, and just like that it was on.

Her current opponent, the younger woman found, was different from every other opponent she had thus far. She was quicker, more acrobatic in her fighting, and relied on an unusual distance weapon to attack. Speed and volume instead of power, and one might find it frustrating. Laurel, however, found it exhilarating — it was like a new puzzle for her to solve, one she'd hopefully manage without her scream.

Just as things were getting good, fun even, Dick got involved and jumped between them before they could engage each other for another round. "Alright, that's enough ladies," he said for both of them to hear.

"Ah, Nightwing," the thief purred. "Who's the newbie?"

"Canary," Laurel answered, crossing her arms.

It was a placeholder, something to call herself while she was in the field so she wouldn't compromise her real identity to anyone. When Bruce told them she needed codenames, Laurel had been at a loss at what to use, until Roy suggested it; according to him, it was what Sara's League name meant, and what they called her sister in the field during Sara's brief tenure as a vigilante in Starling. "If anyone has a right to use it besides her, it's you," he had claimed. Laurel wasn't sure about that, but part of her felt warm using it. It was like having a piece of Sara with her, even though her actual sister was thousands of miles away.

"Catwoman," her erstwhile opponent introduced herself back, a sly smirk on her face. "You're pretty good for a rookie. Just starting out?"

"Oh no," Laurel quickly said, lifting her hands in denial. "I'm not planning on being a vigilante — at least, not full-time. This is just a training opportunity for me."

Catwoman tilted her head. "Training opportunity?"

The younger woman nodded. "There's a man I need to beat so I can save my sister. The Bats are helping me learn how to fight so I can beat him."

"Ah," there was a touch of sympathy now in Catwoman's expression. "Sisterly love. I can understand that. Well, if you need a sparring partner, call me up anytime. I'd be happy to oblige you."

Laurel frowned. "And how am I supposed to do that? I don't have your number, and you're going to jail anyway."

That got her a bark of laughter. "You really are new to Gotham, aren't you?" the criminal remarked. Before Laurel could retort, Catwoman did a backflip, leaping over the side of the building. Shocked, the part-time vigilante ran over to the side of the building to find her, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.

"Don't bother, Canary," Nightwing told her with a sigh, the bag of diamonds Catwoman had been carrying in one of his hands. "She's long gone."

She snapped towards her partner with a scowl. "You're just going to let her go?"

"Trust me, there would've been no point. She would've broken out of Blackgate within the week." And then, he cringed. "Besides, the old man will have her well in-hand soon enough."

The 'old man' had to be Bruce. Laurel thought back to her initial research into Batman and his rogues gallery, recalled the entry about Catwoman, and blanched. On second thought, maybe it was better just to let her go. Hopefully, Bruce would remember to turn off his comm line when they saw each other. It would help avoid an awkward conversation.

Home

"So?" Thea asked, her arms wide as she presented the interior of her new home. "What do you guys think?"

Laurel hummed as she glanced around the new penthouse suite that served as the second home for her two friends. Just as Thea had said, now that she had access to the family fortune again, she was splurging on a new condo for Roy and her to stay at so they no longer had to squeeze the three of them into Laurel's apartment. While Thea had wanted to stay close to Laurel, all three recognized that the current neighborhood Laurel was currently staying in wasn't a safe place to live for a rich and semi-famous teenager. That was just begging for someone to try and rob her every single night.

So they had opted for the far more secure Diamond District instead, where most of Gotham's rich was concentrated anyway. Thea and Roy did some apartment/condo hunting until they found something they both liked, and then the former bought the place outright, much to the realtor's surprise. The news quickly spread, and some heads had turned upon learning that a minor socialite from another city was buying a place in this city of all places. A blurb about Thea had appeared in the Gotham Gazette, but not much more than that. It seems Laurel's surrogate little sister wasn't quite interesting enough to get Vicki Vale's full attention.

The new home of Laurel's friends was an odd combination of sleek and old-fashioned, combining the unique Gotham architecture that dominated the city with the clean, sharp modern sensibilities of today. There was a home gym with the latest exercise equipment, just as Thea promised, a state of the art kitchen, and five bedrooms, each with their own baths. Not too ostentatious, but certainly well above anything Laurel would've been able to afford at any point in her life.

"I love it," Roy declared. "Granted, I helped choose it, but…" He shrugged. Though a Glades native to the core, he didn't have much of a complex when it came to having a rich girlfriend. No toxic masculinity to poison himself from being appreciative of what his girlfriend had to offer, but at the same time he wasn't one who mooched off her either. Roy had picked up volunteering at Crime Alley to pass his days when he wasn't training with Laurel and the Bats, and Thea joined him more often than not.

"Same," Laurel decided after a brief walk around. "It's clean, it's comfortable, and it's convenient. A good choice overall, Speedy."

"That's good to hear," Thea told her, before taking out three pairs of keys. She kept one for herself and handed it to Roy, before handing the last spare to Laurel, much to the older woman's shock.

"Thea…"

Thea cut her off before she could speak any further. "I won't hear it," she said, putting the keys into Laurel's hand. "You're family, Laurel. No matter whatever happened between you and him, you've always been there for me, taken care of me. And I've always been grateful for that. This is my way of showing it."

Laurel swallowed, and pocketed the keys, before pulling Thea into a hug. "I love you, you know that right?"

The younger woman smiled. "I love you too, Laurel," she replied as she returned the embrace.

A low-key chapter, but one that I enjoyed writing. It shows Laurel's developing relationships with everyone and her building her life in Gotham, including the beginnings of her becoming Black Canary. Here, because of her disillusionment with the law and overall focus on freeing Sara, she hasn't quite embraced vigilantism yet. But she will, eventually — she just needs the right push.

Next chapter: Laurel completes her training with the Bats, and moves onto her next teacher.