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Most people would consider modeling one's life after one's favorite musician to be a questionable choice. Especially when said musician was a vigilante. Even more than that, especially when said musician played goth music in the 21st century.
Sienna had been drifting from idea to idea for most of her life, trying to figure out what she wanted to do. Nothing really grabbed her attention, and especially nothing that would make much money. Life was a river, and she was being carried down it, trying to swim but not knowing which tributary was the right path. As the waters carried her down, she ran out of energy to fight the currents, and watched her options fade into her past. The fact that she was in college and had no idea if she was working towards a major that she would use in her life was ever-present in her mind, weighing her down like a bag of bricks.
She'd thought about dropping out, but she wasn't sure she could cope with how disappointed her parents would be. Especially when her perfect brother knew exactly what he wanted to do. She could already hear the comments about how she should've tried harder, how she had to have a plan, had to have an education to make it in today's world. Which she knew, okay? She knew, but she also knew that getting a degree and not doing anything with it would be almost as bad.
What was worse was that she knew what she was bad at, but not what she was good at. For example, chemistry, a class which depended on understanding how molecules worked on a conceptual level. She was horrible with those concepts. What was the actual difference between an ionic and molecular compound? Why should she care? Something in her brain just couldn't understand the ways that everything was made up of smaller things, and all the words got confused in her brain. She tried, halfheartedly, but it took so much effort and it was so miserable and she would just rather do anything else. She could plug the numbers into an equation, which was enough to get a passing grade, but she still didn't really get it.
That was how she felt about a lot of the classes she was taking. None of them really felt like the thing that she could spend her whole life doing. She'd tried out a couple of the clubs the school offered, but that spark just didn't appear. Maybe she'd give up on a fulfilling career and just be an accountant or something.
And then she'd been dragged to that Black Canary concert. Sienna hadn't really understood the point, but one of her friends was from Star City and had insisted that Sienna had to go. And honestly? Her friend had a point. Black Canary's vocals were awe-inspiring, and she couldn't stop staring at the guitarist. They all gave off so much confidence, like they were sure of where they were. Sienna had written off alternative music, because she thought the emo music her brother had been into at 14 was pretty lame, but maybe she'd made a mistake if a goth band could sound like that.
It didn't even bring down Sienna's mood when the concert was attacked. If anything, it made the whole thing cooler. Her friend had been trying to get Sienna to run to safety, but Sienna hadn't been able to stop sneaking peeks at Black Canary fighting. The power of the kick, the core strength she needed for some of those stunts... Sienna wished that was her. She wished she looked like that, wished she could make music like that, but more than anything wished she could fight like that.
Sienna had started daydreaming about Black Canary in that moment. At first, they'd revolved around someone holding her hostage, and Black Canary saving her. And then Black Canary would say some pickup line, and it would be effortlessly charming, and they would make out. (Frankly, as a celebrity crush, Black Canary wasn't even embarrassing. She knew someone who thought the hat made Arsenal look attractive.)
After some time, though, she started to think about how cool it would be to fight with Black Canary. For neither of them to need saving. For her, Sienna, just another ordinary college student, to help make a difference. To help save the world. But that was just a fantasy, nothing to act on.
What she could act on was the fact that Black Canary looked fucking epic onstage. She wanted to be up there, doing that. Not singing, necessarily, but guitar? It was the first thing she'd wanted to do this badly in years. It was like she'd found a map, and the river had diverged a little bit behind her, but she could still swim back with a bit of work. She thought about dropping out right then and there, or switching her major, but she didn't even own a guitar yet, much less know if she'd actually be any good at it. What she needed to do, right now, was save up and prove that she could be good at this, and then she could explain to her parents why she was giving up on college.
When she wasn't studying or working, Sienna had started researching music. She'd ended up down a rabbit hole of gothic bands. Siouxsie, The Cure, Fields of the Nephilim, Rosetta Stone... none of them were as good as Black Canary, but their music was still a vibe and gave Sienna a better understanding of how song structures and lyrics and effects worked within goth music. She'd looked up guitar chords, researched beginner music, even made a Pinterest board of fun makeup looks to try out once she was good enough to play in front of a crowd.
Hell, even Canary's vigilantism was tied to her music. Villains attacking her concerts was a common occurrence. Part of planning for her shows involved designating safe areas and plans for attack. The way Black Canary could juggle multiple things she was passionate about at once? While Sienna hadn't even been able to find one thing she cared? It formed a soup of jealousy and admiration within Sienna's chest, each component too mixed within the other to separate.
Sienna wished she was Black Canary. She knew she couldn't actually be Black Canary, that was absurd, but... she wanted the self-confidence, wanted to just know what her purpose was. Wanted to be able to help the world, instead of just barely existing in it. If Sienna was being carried around, Black Canary was in a motorboat, and the currents didn't affect which way she went. Sienna had fallen into a whirlpool of YouTube videos of Canary's fights, and they all had a few things in common: incredible martial arts and unshakeable confidence that she could do what she did and come out alright on the other side. Sienna wasn't even sure she could survive a calc test.
The turning point? When she decided to stop telling herself that she couldn't, and start telling herself that she just would? She was buying her guitar. She'd been in the shop before, looking through instruments and asking the workers questions and staring wishfully at advertisements of auditions. But this time, she was actually going to take the plunge and buy the thing.
It was mid-tier, not at the level of a guitar that a professional would use but good enough that she could learn on it and use it for a long time. A deep shade of black with little star-shaped accents. Shiny, too— she could see her reflection in the guitar. It didn't feel great to know that she looked exactly as nervous as she felt. She'd paid, thanked the worker, and had been about to leave when the attack started.
She could've run. Easily. She was closer to the door than the criminal was, and he was more focused on the worker than on Sienna. But if she ran, who was she? She wanted to be like her idol, who'd protected people from world-ending threats. Sienna was no vigilante, but this wasn't a world-ending threat. This was an asshole with a gun, who happened to be waving it around at the worker.
The thought of intervening terrified her. But the thought of letting this happen made her stomach turn. She'd told herself that the thought of being a hero was just a fantasy, but what was the difference between her and a hero? There were the obvious things, like training and powers and money and gear and the respect of the public. But none of those things made someone a hero. They made them dangerous, or a meta, or a celebrity, or rich, but as much as those things helped someone to be a hero, it wasn't the determining factor.
What made someone a hero was seeing issues in the world and choosing to do something about it, despite the risk. It wasn't what they had on their side, it was what they had stacked against them. So really, the only thing separating her from the heroes of the Justice League, in that moment with that particular enemy, was the fact that they'd be brave enough to stand up for what was right. Whereas if Sienna ran and kept herself safe, what she'd learn was that she was nothing like the woman she admired.
If she wanted to fight the current, she had to swim. Even when it was hard. Even when there were shadows in the water. If she gave up now, she knew, deep down, that it'd mean she was someone who couldn't forge her own path, couldn't even be brave enough to try. Was that really who Sienna wanted to be?
So she could've left, but she didn't. What now? She was a sleep-deprived college student who hadn't been in a real fight in years. The only thing she had going for her was the element of surprise, because what she was planning to do was completely fucking insane and also this guy had a real-life gun.
Unless.
Fuck. She really, really did not want to smash her brand new guitar against this guy's head. She could not afford to pay the fees for breaking something else. She'd been sleeping through many classes to know if the good Samaritan law applied here.
But... which mattered more, her guitar or this guy's life? Because even if he was unlikely to shoot, that didn't mean he wouldn't. Wasn't being a hero about sacrifice?
If Black Canary were here... well. If Black Canary was here, she'd disarm this guy and restrain him for custody. But she wasn't here. There were no heroes, just a scared worker making barely over minimum rage and a man with a gun who was in the wrong here but probably needed the money for something and her, Sienna, girl dumb enough to think she could fix this.
That wasn't fair. It wasn't that she thought she could, it was that she'd decided that she had to. And she would.
If Black Canary were here, and she didn't have her meta powers or her martial arts training, she would still fight. One of Sienna's hands drifted towards where the neck of the guitar met the body, the other closer to the tuning pegs. She crept closer, her footsteps luckily unheard over the criminal's voice.
The impact of the guitar with the man's head left the strings vibrating under her palms. The sound of hollow wood hitting a dense skull was one she thought she'd remember for her life. She'd hit hard. The man crumpled— probably because he was caught off-guard.
"Are you okay?" she asked the worker, who was staring blankly.
"I..." The worker looked utterly terrified. Shit. What was she supposed to do here?
"Hey, it's okay," she said in her most soothing voice, trying not to panic because oh my god she had just knocked someone out, what the fuck. "I'm gonna call the police. Are you hurt?"
"No, I— No." They were hyperventilating. Shit. Was this a panic attack?
"Do you want me to stay with you until the police get here?"
They just nodded.
Sienna examined her guitar. The bottom had been crushed, much to her dismay. It had taken forever to save up for it. She should feel devastated, and... kind of? But things were replaceable, and people were not, and the musician dream kind of. Fell to the side a little bit.
Because she realized, in that moment, that being able to help people like this felt good. It felt powerful. It felt like the right thing to do, and the thing that she specifically should be doing. It clicked with her brain in a way that nothing had before. The guitar was the cost she'd paid. Music was still something she wanted to do, she knew that in her bones, but the whole vigilante thing was what she needed to do.
She had to train more. That was all. She had to learn martial arts and get to a point where she could defeat villains without property damage. The guitar was the price she'd paid for thinking she could do this so soon. She'd learn more, she'd get good, and then she could try to balance it all.
That was the point when she started looking into what random clubs her college offered. That'd be as good a place to start as any, right? (And hey, maybe she'd find somewhere willing to lend her a guitar until she could save up enough for a new one. Again.)
She'd signed up for the cosplay club, where she could probably learn a bit about how to make her costume. And then she'd also signed up for both the jiu-jitsu and kali groups, because two ways to defend herself was better than one, right?
She'd doubted herself, later that day. Because really, her doubt from earlier was still justified. Who was she to try and do the whole vigilante thing? It was one thing to be in the right place at the wrong time, it was another to actively make this a part of her life. She was just an ordinary person. She could back out.
But why should she? Why was it only metas, or relatives of heroes, or people smart and rich enough to build unstoppable tech, who got to help out? Sienna watched the news like everyone else. It didn't feel good being a sitting duck when the world was about to end. It actually felt horrible. She didn't want to worry about her family being hurt in some invasion, and being powerless to help them. She didn't want any innocent people to suffer. And while the Justice League did a good job with the big threats, they didn't have the manpower or the surveillance to fix all of the costumed-villain-related-issues.
And they shouldn't, because no one organization should have that kind of power. But if she could help, she would. Especially considering that most of the people who needed help the most were the most scared to go to the police, and the heroes of Seattle were mostly too intimidating. There was a niche that needed to be filled: a smaller, more approachable hero, who fought the small battles and made the streets a safer place without saving the world.
Ultimately, she didn't need a justification to try and help. Helping felt good, and it was the right thing to do, and once she was trained she would do more of it. Metas are never asked to justify why they chose to become vigilantes, so she wouldn't either. It didn't matter if she could do this. It just mattered that she was going to.
Making the costume was the highlight. Sienna had figured out early on that the more she covered up and obscured her silhouette, the more secure her secret identity would be. She wore black tights under bright red fishnets, which she'd torn in a couple areas for effect. Thrifted a brown leather jacket, and used a mix of paint and spikes and patches to make it fit the whole red-and-black aesthetic she was going for. (The spikes, if she'd attached them correctly, would serve a dual purpose of making her harder to grab and making her look a bit more intimidating. Every goth she'd met was chill, but the average person didn't think that.) The sneakers and gloves were some particularly lucky thrift store finds.
The main part of the suit was the hardest to figure out: it had to be sturdy and protect her organs. She'd planned out some kind of body-armor corset type situation. It had taken a while to get the proportions right, and ultimately Sienna had scrapped a little functionality for aesthetics. It mirrored Dinah's, albeit with a lower neckline to give her some room to breathe. (And a little bit in case she ran into vampires. A girl could hope, right?)
She was particularly proud of the mask. She needed to see, but she also needed to protect her identity. The solution? She'd heard in some docuseries somewhere that eyebrows are a large part of human facial recognition, and had sculpted the area around the top of her eyes to maintain her field of vision while obscuring the top of her face. She'd also positioned the wings to mimic an extreme cat-eye liner and to hide the birthmark near her hairline that someone who knew her could identify.
Honing her fighting ability wasn't easy. Sienna had ultimately needed to do quite a bit of strength training, and learning the moves was quite a process. That being said, she hadn't expected it to be easy, and she wouldn't let herself give up. She'd gotten her ass handed to her for weeks before she started winning, but she was told that wasn't bad for a beginner in those club's specific environments.
She found fighting satisfying in a way similar to how music was satisfying. There was a rhythm to the moves, a muscle memory that you can just lose yourself in. Not like her classes, which confused her more often than not. Not like math, where even if she could solve the problems, it always felt like she was struggling just to maintain her progress. Not like chemistry, with all the atoms and molecular forces that she didn't really understand. No, this was the physical, real world. It was things she could touch, things she could watch and understand how to do in a way that made so much more sense than academics. Some part of her genuinely loved fighting: the adrenaline, the feeling of winning a fight, and picking apart how to improve when she lost. She'd chosen to do the vigilante thing out of a feeling of duty, but it was a hell of a lot closer to a passion than anything else she had. It was like she'd finally found the current leading her down the right branch of the river, and she was truly swimming at long last.
Even music informed how she interacted with the idea of being a vigilante. Learning chords to a song wasn't that different from learning different aspects of a complex move. Learning the parts other people played wasn't that different from figuring out common responses that certain people had, and figuring out how to work with that. It was like a puzzle that she could be open-ended about solving. She'd always been more creative than analytical, and it was nice having an area where interpretation was valued, where there were basic building blocks that she could then just play with to learn what worked best for her.
As she approached a state of being ready to begin her vigilantism, Sienna had made a couple of rules for herself. She would only go after crime that was violent or harmful in a real, concrete way: not after random smokers or shoplifters at Target. If someone was stealing from a small business, or putting lives at risk, that was considered truly harmful. Most importantly was that saving lives had to be more important to her than revenge, or 'capturing the bad guy.' If she let someone get hurt trying to get the villain for an ego boost, she was no better than them.
Some part of her wondered if Black Canary would notice her someday. At this point, she'd stopped doing all of this because of Black Canary. The woman still mattered to Sienna, obviously, but if Black Canary told her to stop, Sienna wasn't sure she'd obey. Part of her hoped that Black Canary wouldn't notice her, and she could get away with flying solo. Part of her hoped that they could team up one day, like Sienna had dreamed of months ago. Both were probably unrealistic, but did either matter? She was doing this for herself.
Looking herself in the mirror after months of practice, months of strength training, months of preparation, Sienna still wasn't sure she felt ready. Her costume fit like a glove, and the knowledge that she'd assembled it brought Sienna a feeling of pride. But could she really go out there? Be useful in a fight?
No. She couldn't let herself have doubt, couldn't let her negative self-talk spiral. If there was a major rogue out there, a real hero could handle it. Sienna could stop minor robberies. She could do her part. She couldn't let herself allow nerves to stop her.
Sienna had left a picture of Black Canary standing over a fallen rogue as her home screen. Maybe Sienna was nowhere near Black Canary's level yet, but she wasn't claiming to be, and she was sure she could get there. The difference between her and Black Canary was years of experience, and the easiest way to get experience was to go out there and start. The other main difference was obviously that Black Canary, unlike Sienna, was a meta-human— but it wasn't like she used those powers every fight. If Black Canary could do this, so could Sienna.
She crawled out of her dorm room window, careful not to wake her roommate up. Time for her first patrol!
Sienna made it about a month without incident. She'd made a habit of checking bars for anyone who needed a ride (and to help convince any violent drunks to settle down). She'd looked through alleys for muggings, she'd even stopped a couple. Once, she'd found a public shooter, which was terrifying but she was glad that she'd been there to prevent any deaths. She didn't meet any other heroes within that month, which was probably for the best. It meant she wasn't on anyone's radar. Meant she could keep making the city a better place.
And then Black Canary died. And so did the rest of the Justice League, but all of them had some kind of replacement, and Black Canary was one-of-a-kind. Maybe it was parasocial of her. Maybe it was a subconscious urge to fill the power vacuum. But Black Canary had been the reason Sienna became a vigilante in the first place. She'd been the reason Sienna got into music. All of Sienna's goals, her dreams, were tied to Black Canary— even if they'd moved beyond that, Sienna still felt... some kind of responsibility, almost? To try and help the remaining heroes make up for the loss.
That was how she found herself in the middle of a battlefield, fighting with escrima sticks she'd stolen and was still getting used to using. (At least they were red. She didn't want to have her weapons clash with her color scheme, not after the effort she'd put into her costume.) It was thrilling and dangerous and exciting and terrifying and Sienna was glad she was there, but also wished she was anywhere else. It was like a roller coaster, and it was too late to get off, and Sienna would have to figure out how she'd felt during it afterward.
Robin had tried to get her to leave, and maybe she should've! But she hadn't asked to be babysat, and she had chosen to put herself in danger. That day with the guitar, she'd made her choice. Maybe the stakes were higher, maybe it was more dangerous, but it was just an extension of that same decision. She had picked which way to swim, and nothing would make her turn back now.