Iris + The Rest - AU Iris West x Laurel Lance/Black Canary
I know that there are many amazing relationships that Iris has had with characters other than her family and her love interests that could be talked about during this section of IrisWestWeek but I decided to go with an AU version with Iris and Laurel because I am disappointed that we didn’t get a scene where Iris and Laurel meet and I am also super bitter that now we’ll never see a scene like this so I am righting this terrible wrong with my AU. I kept my AU story under a Read More so I don’t flood everyone’s dashboards with it in case they don’t want to read it but if you would like to read it, just click to read!
Anyways, while Laurel was in law school, I’d like to think she made regular trips to Central City to see her mother, who, according to Arrow, teaches at Central City University, and after such a long train ride/car ride, Laurel is going to need some caffeine. She always goes to CC Jitters and always gets the same barista, Iris West. She and Iris bond over the fact that they both have overprotective fathers who are cops and that they both did criminology as their undergraduate majors and soon Iris has Laurel’s drink order memorized and Laurel always slips an extra $20 into the tip jar for Iris.
One day, when Laurel comes in for her java fix, she sees Iris, behind the counter, trying to surreptitiously wipe her eyes with her CC Jitters barista apron and immediately asks her what’s wrong. Iris explains that her father found her application to the CCPD, stopped talking to her and all but told her that if she joined the CCPD, she would have to move out of the house. She breaks down in tears because for so long, she has wanted to be a cop like her grandfather and like her father and Laurel explains that the same thing happened to her with her father when she tried to join the SCPD. Laurel told her that at first it was hard to give up her dream but she was able to a different way to help people, by going to law school and being a lawyer. During Iris’s break, she and Laurel sit in the staff room of CC Jitters and plan out what Iris wants to do now that being a cop is not an option anymore. They finally settle on journalism because if Iris can’t be on the front line as a cop, she wants to do the next best thing and be able to report from behind the front line. After her shift, when Laurel goes to Central City University to see her mother, Iris tags along with her and puts in her application for the MA in Journalism program offered by Central City University (yes I know in the show the journalism course is just for a sociology credit but I changed it in my AU) and the rest is history.
Laurel and Iris are there to help each other with everything, be it ADA/lawyer stuff for Laurel, journalism/reporter stuff for Iris or vigilante/superhero stuff for both of them and are there for each other in the good times (when Iris gets her first byline, when Laurel’s family is finally whole again, when Laurel gets her first win as ADA, when Laurel takes down her first criminal as Black Canary etc.) and in the bad times (when Iris finds out Joe, Barry and Eddie have all been lying to her, when Eddie dies, when Sara dies, when Iris learns her mother is still alive, etc.)
In my AU, it’s also Iris who is the one to send the video of Laurel punching the federal marshall to Felicity because she’s so proud and knows that Laurel’s training is paying off.
When Iris publishes her blog about the streak, Laurel always takes time out of her busy schedule to read and comment on every single post. Every time Laurel has a new case, Iris keeps as up to date as possible and calls to congratulate her when she wins and calls to console her when she loses. When Iris gets her job at Central City Picture News, Laurel takes out a subscription and cuts all of Iris’s articles out and puts them into a little scrapbook because she’s just so dang proud. And you can bet that Iris has that first exclusive interview with the newest vigilante in Starling City, the Black Canary.
