Just Fine.

(Author's Note: Yet another Laurel Lance kicking ass AU. Here, she's been the Black Canary since the Pilot, and Oliver fell right back in love with her soon after. Other than that, everything remains the same. Felicity is on the team as impossibly-cute IT girl and main supplier of Oliver Queen thirst, and Diggle is honorable big brother. Also, Ted Grant in this story is older, sounds like his strep throat has strep throat, and is in no mood for any of this bullshit he's about to be involved with. Enjoy the show.)

(Laurel's POV) She remembered the day she first decided to become a vigilante. It was an unseasonably warm fall day in Starling City, and sunny which was another anachronism. For some reason, it seems like her hometown has always been darker and rainier than any other place that she's been.

She was walking to CNRI for her first day at work, a bag of croissants and coffee in her hand, when she saw it. A young woman, not much older than she was, being hassled by three guys across Largent Road. If that had been all, she would have just been peeved about it but left it alone. Then, the other shoe dropped. A black-and-white, much like the ones her father would have driven when he was a patrolman, drove right by and did nothing. THAT horrified her.

How could these officers of the law, men and women sworn to do the right thing, just stand by and watch them? So, with a mumbled curse that she'd have no time for breakfast now, Dinah Laurel Lance rushed across the street and used every gram of everything she'd ever learned in those self-defense classes to send the three men running. Checking to make sure the young girl was ok; Laurel then rushed back across the street and grabbed her coffee and baked goods. She still did have a job that she couldn't afford to be late to, after all. Except now, she had a new goal burning a hole in her chest. She would save the world, not just with her mind, but with her body.

But before she did anything about it, her naturally cautious personality meant she'd at least bring it up to her father, Detective 1st Grade Quentin Lance. Maybe he knew those officers, and could explain why it was they had passed a textbook assault without so much as a siren. Idly, she thought of that as her code name should things go wrong, but buried it just as quick. This city didn't need another figure of destruction. It needed hope, and love. It needed brightness.

When she went to go to see her dad, though, she didn't find the sober investigative mind she was looking for. Instead, she found someone drunk on bargain-basement gin and bitter with life. He ignored her questions about why the police hadn't helped, spending all of his time on the well-worn notes of complaint that Sara was dead and Oliver Queen had taken her from him. She had heard the song so many times she could play the music blindfolded. That was fine, then. Her father wouldn't help. She'd have to. She'd need to be the justice criminals couldn't run from, or pay off.

And from that day, she decided that she would approach her new goal with the same zeal that she had approached becoming a lawyer. Weekends out turned into moving all of the furniture of her small apartment into her bedroom to practice all the forms of Muay Thai, kickboxing, and Malay stick-fighting that she found on the internet. She signed up for an MMA gym run by this gruff guy named Ted Grant, whose extraordinarily hoarse voice belied a genuine care and aptitude for teaching. Eventually, she found a CrossFit gym called Starlight CrossFit and soon discovered the joys of Olympic weightlifting under a former head coach of the Chinese women's team. All of that, blended together with her own hard-charging nature, made her someone to be cautious of.

She became a heroine, a street-level hero who did all the basic work police didn't seem to know how to. People loved her, and she spent every day making sure that love was never misplaced.

And then her last boyfriend showed up.

Oliver Queen's place in her heart was always more complicated than it ought to have been. For right now, she just couldn't think too hard about it, about HIM. Her city needed to be saved, and to be shown real hope besides.

(Oliver's POV)

Oliver Queen arrived home and could, instantly, feel the difference in his city. Tommy, for one, was noticeably guarded, almost cold in the way he dealt with Oliver. Honestly, that felt a little odd. But he supposed he could subtly look into that later. Right now, he needed to see her.

In those five years, when pain was all he knew, she was the flicker of light that kept him going. When his life was so depressing that he wanted to drive an arrow into his heart and make it all STOP, she was the voice he heard begging him to keep trying, keep standing up. So now that he was back home, he needed to see her. Needed to tell her what she had meant to him, and hope to goodness the sins he had committed before he went on the Queen's Gambit were forgiven.

First things first, though, were his tools. While he had been put through the kind of hell that would cripple most people, Oliver Queen could freely admit that there was one benefit. He had everything, every physical tool, to rebuild the city he had always exploited. If he was going to do this, and he felt he had to, it was some kind of comfort that he would be prepared for it.

Still, though, he couldn't do it. He couldn't do anything, not one solitary thing, until he saw her. Even if she hated him, and that was where he imagined things were going to end up, he at least had to apologize for all of it.

So, he went to the place where Tommy told her Laurel was going to be, even as he said so with more than a bit of scorn in his voice. What had HAPPENED here?

"Hello, Laurel" he said, his voice thicker and needier than he would have liked. Honestly, though, he didn't care. He couldn't be standoffish, or cool. She needed to know he cared, and that he was sorry.

(Laurel's POV)

There he was. After five years of stopping muggers and purse-snatchers, and becoming an enemy of just about every major street gang in Starling City, she found it amusing that this was the thing that gave her pause. She knew, like she knew her own name, everything about the man. Even when everyone told her he was a failure; she knew the truth. The truth he couldn't admit to himself.

Like right now, for instance, she could look at him and tell he regretted everything he ever did to wrong her. But regrets without proof he had changed wasn't going to be enough for something like this. She needed, and quite frankly deserved, more before she thought about anything related to him that wasn't white-hot anger.

And then, he moved to her.

(Oliver's POV)

She was so much different than he remembered. Her smile was still there, her joie de vivre intact. But she looked stronger, both inside and out. He admitted, with joy in him that he thought had died years ago, that she looked healthier than she had when he had left. But then, as he glanced at her with skills he wished he didn't have, he saw it.

Scars and bruises like his own. What had she been doing while he was away? More than that, he wanted to help. Needed to help her.

He'd tell her everything. That was the only way to truly prove he was the man she deserved, even if he didn't think he deserved anything.

"Can I talk to you outside? Please?" he begged, sadness and soul-deep need in his voice. He supposed, absent-mindedly, that the old him would have found this ridiculous. But five years in hell had brought him many things, clarity chief amongst them.

He needed Laurel Lance like most people needed air. Five years away from her had taught him about the man he would be without her presence in his life, and she would need his help if his suspicions about her life were true.

(Laurel's POV)

The Oliver Queen she remembered was never sad, never had that much need in his voice. Need for her, she realized. What had he been through?

Whatever it was, he deserved one last conversation. Whether it would be the final one they had, though, was up to him. If he was still that same big-mouthed party boy who can't think of anything but the next drink and the next girl, he'd be meaningless to her.

But if he was as serious as he seemed right now, he wouldn't be. And the way he was looking at her, like he knew her secrets, might meant she had something she had always needed: A partner.

"Yes, Oliver?" she stated, keeping her hands on her hips and a frown on her face as she tried to remain calm and taciturn.

"I am so sorry, Laurel. I can never, ever, EVER be sorry enough for what I did, or apologize enough for it. I just wanted you to know that before I get out of your life forever" he said, and the calmness she had fought so hard to keep cracked into a million little pieces.

After he said it, though, he left. Almost as if he was terrified she'd hate him.

(Oliver's POV)

He couldn't stand in front of her and watch her hate him. He couldn't do it.

So he walked away, back towards his car and Tommy, and away from her.

And then, just loud enough for him and only him, he heard it.

"I need you" she said.

(Laurel's POV)

As the last consonant of it left her mouth, it was true. She needed him, in ways she couldn't have admitted to herself until she realized she was about to lose him.

"We're not going to make the same mistakes we did before, Ollie. We're going to go slow, and get this right. But we've spent 5 years apart, and no more. Not a second more" she said, standing up to her full height and kissing him lovingly on the lips.

"Good. Canary."

"What?" she said, stuttering nearly. He couldn't have figured it out this quickly. There's just… no way.

"Do you think I couldn't figure it out? All those stories about a woman in the Glades, doing the things YOU would have done. You need a name, and a team. Let me give that to you. Because I need to do it too. I need to help" said Oliver, and she smiled.

6 months later…

The Green Arrow, and the Black Canary, were waiting patiently to go out on patrol. They added new scars, and new team members. But there were questions left to ask.

What happened with Tommy? Why had he become so cold, especially to them? How had that Dark Archer been so easily to handle them both?

But whatever it was, whatever the reason, they were doing the thing they had known they needed to. And they were doing it together. Things were going to be just fine.