Second Chances: Arrow

Chapter 5

Before the chapter, a little note. I know that so far, Arrow has solely been flashback chapters, but there's two reasons for that. The first one is that I'm trying to stretch Arrow out until I've finished Thea's flashbacks in Artemis, since I want to make sure that it's all caught up to the present so Arrow won't give any spoilers to Artemis, if that makes sense. The second reason is actually to pay homage to the fact that flashbacks were a big part of Arrow, so I'm trying to capture that. Plus, so much happened in the past of this series that it can't be covered in one or two chapters.

Since she wasn't sure how long she'd be in Gotham, Laurel had moved there to work for the Gotham District Attorney's office and when her father had asked her why, she said it was because she needed some space away from Star City to get over Oliver, which her father had understood, since while he still didn't like his daughter's relationship with the dead socialite, he knew that he'd been a decent man when he'd died and that Laurel had truly loved him, not to mention by that point, Sara had also gone missing, so Quentin understood why she'd want to leave the city for awhile, he just wished that she hadn't decided to move to a city as a crime ridden as Gotham, since while Star City was no paradise, at least it didn't rely on a masked crusader to keep it safe like Gotham did. Or at least, not yet.

Anyways, after Laurel had moved out to Gotham, she also began her training under Batman and also, to her surprise, she made friends with Bruce Wayne's adopted daughter, Helena Bertinelli, or as she was called in this reality, Helena Wayne, who was her fellow lawyer at the DA's office and the unstable maniac she'd been in the old reality.

Though one thing Laurel found remained the same in this new reality was that Helena was still the Huntress, but in this reality, she fought alongside Batman and even adhered to his code of no killing. Laurel also discovered that Batman's secret identity was none other than Bruce Wayne, the billionaire CEO of Wayne Enterprises, which honestly explained how Batman was able to fund his operation, though Laurel did use her legal expertise to persuade Bruce to find a way to make his bat budget look legitimate in case someone decided to go digging.

Anyways, as Bruce trained Laurel, she began to learn not only how to control her power, but also how to fight with and without her power. She also discovered the origin of her power and it was the result of another change in this reality. Apparently she had inherited her metagene from her grandmother on her dad's side of the family, who she was named after, Dinah Lance. It turns out that in this reality, her grandmother had been a member of the first incarnation of the Justice Society of America, who still fought for the allies during World War 2, just with a slightly different lineup, though Laurel didn't know it, but what she did know was that her grandmother was the original Black Canary in this reality, so Laurel picked up that mantle to honor her and she'd even had Bruce's tech guy Luke Fox design her suit to resemble her grandmother's suit, though it wasn't as revealing and was also designed to help her control her cry.

Laurel spent the next two years training under Batman and learning to become a hero under a master, but she also noticed how rundown Bruce was getting as Batman and she began to trying to convince him to find someone to appoint as a successor as the protector of Gotham, since Helena had started spending more time outside of the city and even if she wasn't, the Huntress just didn't provide the same level of fear to Gotham's criminals that the Bat did, since she knew that Bruce couldn't keep doing this forever, since not only was he getting up there in age, no matter how good he may luck, he'd been doing this since most of the modern day heroes were kids and he didn't age anywhere near as slowly as Superman did, so he'd need to start slowing down, especially since she could see the toll it was taking on him emotionally and psychically, it was only a matter of time until he snapped.

That was what happened when he always worked alone until now. And even so, Helena was out of the city more often than she was in it and Laurel's training was nearly complete, so soon she'd be heading back to Star City to start protecting it, so he'd need to find someone to take over protecting Gotham so that he could start focusing on living his life and to that end, she'd recommended that he start training his cousin Kate, who'd recently been dishonorably discharged from military school over her sexuality, something both Laurel and Helena were working on a lawsuit for, to take his place, since she seemed like the best candidate for the job, though first Bruce would have to convince Kate to give up on her anger towards Batman.

After Bruce did start training Kate, she and Laurel became good friends until finally, the day came for Laurel to return home to Star City to begin protecting it.