embers

When Laurel woke up, she didn't know where she was.

This was not the first time this had happened to her.

She remembers once, she woke up in a bed she didn't recognize. She remembers the stale alcohol on her breath and the world tilting head ache. She knew she must have been drunk the night before, or taken something, though she couldn't remember anything. It was a black hole of nothing. Thinking about this had sent Laurel's mind to a place of total numbness. She was the black hole. She consumed and destroyed.

She'd reacted on auto pilot. One simple action after another. She had lifted the covers slowly. Thankfully she still had her clothes on. She still needed to check though, she knew that. She moved her hand into her underwear. Nothing felt sore. She didn't see any bruises, though that didn't actually mean that much. But she surmised that nothing had happened to her. She didn't think anyone had done anything to her, thankfully.

Once she had stumbled as quietly as possible out of the bed, she began to notice things about the room. For one it was littered with things she recognized. It had turned out that she'd not been in danger. Felicity had found her, somewhere, somehow, out of it on god knows what, and had taken her back to her place - Felicity couldn't get any sense out of Laurel when she'd asked about her keys, so Felicity's apartment it was.

After the embarrassment and sickening fear had gone - or at least the fear anyway - Laurel had known for the first time pure hopelessness. She had finally understood that whilst if anything had been done to her it was not her fault - her addictions were dangerous. They were frightening. She didn't know herself, she lost time and agency and that struck her then. She had been so calm, checking her own body for abuse. The real trauma lay inside of her. She was becoming someone she didn't recognize. She was becoming hollow, and void.

And so she had become the black canary. She had dug around in the dirt and roots of her soul. She had nurtured it and loved it and she had grown once more, into something more beautiful. She had been do determined not to be hurt again.

But this had happened.

She had woken up in a strange place. She had lost control. Something had been done to her and she barely knew what or why.

She was in a warehouse, by the looks of things. Unrestrained in a small room, she could see out a window to the other side of the building. An abandoned looking warehouse, she amended to herself.

She shivered. She hated the idea that someone had acted upon her, invaded her life, crossed her borders, and despite everything she hadn't stopped it. She had once been able and ready to hurt herself - but this was someone else's doing. And that devastated her in that moment.

Laurel tried to take a deep breath, to swallow her rising sense of panic. She tried to think.

The room she was in was very light, thanks to the window. Obviously people wandering around and peering in wasn't a worry. She vaguely remembered a fight from the night before - or thought she did anyway. But she didn't know why she would have been kidnapped. Almost no one knew she was the black canary and she had been at home at the time. She was in her normal t shirt and jeans. And so she surmised, they - whoever they were - hadn't taken the canary. They had taken Laurel Lance.

She tried to think of any criminals she'd angered recently - but since she was very good at both her jobs, they were all in jail. And besides. You didn't kidnap someone to punish them, you would just kill them or hurt them. The only reason you kidnapped someone is because you wanted something from them...or from someone else. Her father?

If that was the case then she would just have to find a way to escape. No one would ever use her, full stop, never mind to hurt people she loved. She would have to protect herself in order to protect her family as well.

Just as she thought this, the door squealed open. A huge man came in and looked at her as if he didn't have a care in the world. He had a huge beard covering his face, but Laurel thought she could still see his sneer when she raised an eyebrow at him.

The villain waxed poetic, as villains are wont to do. They all thought their cause was justified. None of them ever were. They just loved the sound of their own voice. They were performers. Laurel wished she could scream until her lungs burst. She wished she could scream them all to dust.

Instead, she sat quietly as the man who had orchestrated her kidnapping deigned to tell her why. Since they, in their arrogance, had not restrained her, she had an idea that she could potentially take her kidnappers down. But it would have to be at the right time. And honestly, she didn't actually know if she could, with no weapons and no idea how many people were in the building. Or where she was.

Laurel blinked suddenly, returning to herself, when she heard a familiar name. A name she had not expected. How could a name so beautiful rip through this room? How could it exist in the mouth of this man?

"Nyssa." She breathed quietly, repeating after him.

"Nyssa Al Ghul has a lot to answer for." Blackbeard said - That is what she called him in her mind, anyway. For obvious reasons. Cisco would be appalled at her lack of originality, she thinks.

"And who are you, to be her judge?" Laurel asks loftily - but she finds that she means it, very deeply.

"I am one of the men who is going to bring about a new age for the league of assassins. But there are certain pieces of information I need. Certain groups have to be informed that the league has been reformed. But they are a traditional lot, the people the league dealt with. We need Nyssa Al Ghul to..."

"To make it legitimate." Laurel finishes. She shakes her head. "If you need her to convince people to follow you, then maybe you're not the right guy to be in charge. She won't do it, you know."

Blackbeard waved her comment away. He seemed to have convinced himself that his idiotic plan would work. But if the many high end groups of businessmen or mercs or anyone else the league did business with were worth their salt, they would know he was no true leader. But disbanding the league had created a power vacuum, and people did stupid things to gain power. Like using Laurel as leverage of Nyssa.

"She will do everything I say, if she values your life. How much faith do you have in her, I wonder?"

And then he left her, with the seeds of doubt in her heart.

Did she have faith in Nyssa? Did she honestly believe Nyssa would risk everything for her? Truly, she didn't know.

Laurel tried so hard to the light in people. She knew what kind of a gift that was. She knew what a little belief could do. And she had thought she saw something in Nyssa, something good. Nyssa had had her light trained out of her - but that didn't mean it was extinguished. Laurel had thought that. She had thought she'd known it completely. But now she wasn't so sure. Nyssa was pragmatic. She saw the bigger picture. And so would she, knowing the harm it might cause, do something stupid to help Laurel?

Laurel wants to believe in her. She wants to do that for her. She remembers Nyssa's face, when she had melted the ring. She had looked at Laurel, straight in the eyes, and Laurel had felt a shift in her heart. She had felt that she had been right all along.

She tries to remember that feeling now. She tried to sink it into her and spread it out against her like a shield. Laurel believed in people. She defended people. Ever since she could remember she had wanted to help people. Those long nights at CNRI, too much coffee and pencils in her hair, finding the one thing that would win her case. She had changed a lot since then, she had lost a lot, but she had not lost herself so much that she was willing to give up on people.

She couldn't do much right now, but she could do this. She could trust Nyssa.

She decided to try and find a way out. Hopefully, by the time she did, she would have some back up.