History Fanfic / BlackbirdArrow

* BleedEmAndWeep: After her first kill, Laurel is deeply rattled but manages to stay composed. It's after her first actual assassination that she completely breaks down and vomits up everything in her stomach. Nyssa reassures her that it's a common reaction.

* ItNeverGetsAnyEasier: Laurel expresses concern that killing people will get so easy, that she won't feel a thing anymore. Given how broken she is in the present, it probably didn't get easier.

** Both of them are this to Sara as well, though of the neglectful variety. When they weren't spoiling her rotten and letting her get away with murder, they were ignoring her and failing to give her any sufficient moral support. Tellingly, Sara has been slowly wasting away over the last three years and neither of them have noticed and/or have attempted remedy the situation. When you look at it objectively, Sara is as much of a victim of their bad parenting as Laurel was, just in a less obvious and seemingly more palatable fashion.

* GuiltComplex: Oliver blames himself for Laurel's fate. While he does share some of the blame, it's tangential at best, and the ones really at fault are Dinah and, to a lesser extent, Sara. Arguably even Quentin holds more responsibility because he failed to actually keep an eye on Laurel due to his own grief and thus failed to realize she was kidnapped for ''years'' until Oliver pointed out how out-of-character her departure was. Even Laurel acknowledges this in the flashback where she finds out he's alive, though part of her is understandably still angry at him.

** The Lances basically let Sara get away with figurative murder because she was the baby of the family, and completely failed to parent her at all. Notably, this extends even after she gets back -- Quentin has made no genuine effort to actually build a relationship with Sara and Dinah is willfully ignorant of how her 'favorite' daughter has been slowly killing herself over the last three years due to the guilt over what happened to Laurel.

* WellDoneSoneGuy:

* TheAtoner:
** Oliver, naturally, after he finds out what ''really'' happened to Laurel. He puts himself through TrainingFromHell just to get her back from the League.
** Sara has never forgiven herself for allowing her mother to trade Laurel for her. To the point that she outright expects her sister to kill her when they finally see each other again.

** The final step to officially joining the League is to have one of these with a fellow recruit.

** Laurel crossed it after Dinah traded her for Sara. It only got worse after she made her first kill, and by the time [[spoiler:Malcolm]] sees her again, he notes that she wouldn't have lasted much longer before becoming an outright DeathSeeker.

** Nyssa finds the manner in which Laurel "joined" the League, and the threat against her city to keep her in line, utterly repulsive. So much so that she even promised Laurel that she would release her from her vow the moment she became Ra's. Unfortunately, the present time shows that there was no way Laurel would've been able to last that long.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: Like many of Ray_Writes' stories, the Lances. It's telling that the person who ultimately came through for Laurel in the end was the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister (even if said ex-boyfriend has [[TookALevelInKindness changed]] ''significantly'' since they last saw each other) and the aforementioned sister instead of her parents, who either failed to realize she had been kidnapped for ''three years'' (Quentin) or arranged the kidnapping to save her other daughter in order to assuage her own guilt (Dinah). In the end, despite the parents' desperate attempts to blame the family's issues on Oliver and his relationship with Laurel, all the relationship actually did was just expose and magnify the problems that were already there.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: [[spoiler:After learning about the deal, Tommy and Thea are clearly unhappy with Sara. While Sara tries to rationalize their rightful anger, she is correct about one thing -- they're in no real position to judge, seeing as they have never experienced the level of trauma everyone else on the plane has. As she puts it, they're still the "spoiled children" Oliver and her were before the ''Gambit'']].

** Laurel notes that Oliver didn't really think through the unintended consequences of the method he used to free her from the League, though to his credit that was partly because it was the only option offered that would allow them both to leave alive.

* InsaneTrollLogic: Dinah's poor rationalizations for her decision are an obvious veil to cover up her self-centered motives.
* InternalReveal: In the flashbacks, Laurel learns Oliver survived the ''Gambit'' from Maseo, who recognized her from the picture of her Oliver carried around.

** Quentin finally recognizes how much of an asshole he's been to everyone but especially to Laurel when he realizes that he completely failed to notice that his eldest daughter had been missing for three years. Worse yet, it was Oliver who pointed out how strange Laurel's departure, which is just rubbing salt in the wound at that point.

* TheScapegoat: Both of Laurel's parents try to blame all the family's troubles post-''Gambit'' on Laurel's relationship with Oliver, and thus by extension Laurel herself. They refuse to acknowledge that, in the end, what happened to Sara was her own fault. All Oliver did was the make the offer; Sara is the one who accepted, and everything that followed after, including what happened to Laurel, was either the result of her choices or of Dinah's.

** First Laurel finds out that her boyfriend cheated on her with her sister on the boat trip that (supposedly) killed both of them. Over the course of the following two years her parents divorce and she suffers emotional abuse from both of them because they blame her relationship with Oliver for what happens. Then she's kidnapped, finds out her sister is alive, and then is betrayed and sold out to a cult of murderers by her mother in exchange for the safety and freedom of said sister, and is forced to commit to said cult or else her entire ''city'' dies. She then suffers TrainingFromHell, and is forced into becoming a murderer herself in order to honor the deal. To say Laurel is a BrokenBird after all this would be a massive understatement.

* {{Foil}}: Oliver and Sara to Quentin and Dinah. Quentin was too stuck on himself and his alcohol to realize his eldest daughter had been kidnapped for ''years'', while Oliver, the boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister, managed to figure out what happened to her as soon as he got home and found out she was gone, and then trained his ass off to rescue her. Dinah traded Laurel to the League to save Sara and felt little to no guilt about it due to her InsaneTrollLogic rationalizations, while Sara recognized how horrible the "trade" was, regretted it immediately and all but destroyed herself in her remorse, before throwing her lot in with the first person she knew who had the will and means to save her sister years later. In the end, the two people who betrayed Laurel are the ones to prove their love for her and come through for her, while the parents that were supposed comfort and protect her failed to do so in every way imaginable.

* HeelRealization: Quentin finally recognizes how much of an asshole he's been to everyone but especially to Laurel when he realizes that he completely failed to realize that his eldest daughter had been missing for three years. Worse yet, it was Oliver who pointed out how strange Laurel's departure, which is just rubbing salt in the wound at that point.

** It becomes very clear that Dinah's decision isn't driven so much by the desire to save Sara as it is to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go onto the ''Gambit''. Made all the more obvious by how much Sara has been able to destroy herself under Dinah's care, implying that her mother has completely failed to offer any real emotional support.
** Quentin himself was too busy drowning in self-pity to realize Laurel was missing. To his credit, he's genuinely horrified by that.

** [[spoiler:When Laurel gets Oliver to release Nyssa from the League, Malcolm (who was planning on killing her as a show of force) is impressed and notes that Laurel was always the most clever of Tommy's social circle]]. ** [[spoiler:He also expresses some respect and admiration for Oliver over having the strength and will to not only challenge Ra's al Ghul, but also ''win'']].

** Both of them are this to Sara as well, though of the neglectful variety. When they weren't spoiling her rotten and letting her get away with murder, they were ignoring her and failing to give her any sufficient moral support. Tellingly, Sara has been slowly wasting away over the last three years and neither of them have noticed and/or have attempted remedy the situation.

** The Lances basically let Sara get away with figurative murder because she was the baby of the family, and completely fail to parent at all. Notably, this extends even after she gets back -- Quentin has made no genuine effort to actually build a relationship with Sara and Dinah is willfully ignorant of how her 'favorite' daughter has been slowly killing herself over the last three years due to the guilt over what happened to Laurel.

** [[spoiler:When Laurel gets Oliver to release Nyssa from the League, Malcolm (who was planning on killing her as a show of force) is impressed and notes that Laurel was always the most clever of Tommy's social circle. He also expresses some respect and admiration for Oliver for having the strength and will to not only challenge Ra's al Ghul, but also ''win'']].

** By contrast, Quentin's reaction to Laurel's abrupt departure is to assume she abandoned him and resent her for the next three years, while Dinah outright traded her for her sister because she didn't want to live with her own guilt of letting Sara go on the ''Gambit''. To say nothing of their treatment of Sara when they got back, where they rejoiced in her return and then ignored her, allowing her to slowly self-destruct over the guilt of what happened to her sister. Ultimately, while Laurel's plight showed that Oliver and Sara were good people at heart who had changed for the better, it also revealed to her and to them what Quentin and Dinah really are: self-centered people and terrible parents.

* HeelRealization: Quentin finally recognizes how much of an asshole he's been to everyone but especially to Laurel when he realizes that he completely failed to realize that his eldest daughter had been missing for three years. Worse yet, it was Oliver who pointed out how strange Laurel's departure, which is just rubbing salt in the wound at this point.

** It becomes very clear that Dinah's decision isn't driven so much by the desire to save Sara as it is to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go onto the ''Gambit''.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Both Tommy and Thea end up on Oliver's trip to the Himalayas. Tommy because he provided the plane, Thea because she snuck on. The thing is, they have no idea ''why'' Oliver is going to the Himalayas (or why he took Sara with him), and neither of the aforementioned two, nor Diggle, are talking. It isn't until [[spoiler:Malcolm]] enters the picture that they get some idea of what is actually going on.

** Part of what convinces Oliver that there is something wrong about Laurel's disappearance. She is too confrontational to use the SilentTreatment; and even if she left Starling City, she would return just to tell him and Sara how much they hurt her.
** It takes Oliver to point it out, but Quentin also eventually notes that disappearing and staying gone doesn't fit her argumentative nature; and above all else, she ''cares'' and wouldn't simply vanish.

** When drunk at least, Quentin is verbally and emotionally abusive to Laurel as well; and (just like Dinah) blames Laurel for what happened to Sara. The fact that he was too busy drinking and wallowing in self-pity to notice that Laurel was missing for ''three years'' doesn't speak well of him either, even if he does feel guilt for it.

** On top of what she went through in canon (Oliver and Sara's infidelity and "deaths", her mother abandoning her, and her father's shoddy treatment of her) being been handed over to the League by her own mother has left Laurel in a ''much'' worse state than her show counterpart.
** Sara as well, who is still traumatized by the ''Amazo'' and has been eaten alive by guilt for years.

* ParentalNeglect: Quentin failed to realize that Laurel had been kidnapped for over ''three years'' because he was too deep in his cups with his grief over Sara's (supposed) loss. Knowing what happened to Laurel, it's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for him.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: In the end, Laurel's cheating ex-boyfriend and her sister, the one he cheated on her with, prove that they love her more than either of her parents ever did (or, in the case of Quentin, bothered to express) by saving her from the League [[spoiler:and, in the case of the former, nearly dying in the process]]. When you look at things objectively, it really doesn't paint Quentin and especially Dinah in a good light, even if Oliver and Sara have changed and become better people since then.

* SelectiveObliviousness: Quentin and Dinah blame Oliver for inviting Sara on the ''Gambit'' and Laurel for dating Oliver in the first place. Neither one seem to realize that Sara ''chose'' to get on the boat. Dinah does blame herself for letting Sara go, but Quentin doesn't seem to realize yet the role his parenting played in the situation.

* DysfunctionalFamily: Like many of Ray_Writes' stories, the Lances. It's telling that the person who ultimately came through for Laurel in the end was the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister (even if said ex-boyfriend has [[TookALevelInKindness changed]] ''significantly'' since they last saw each other) and the aforementioned sister instead of her parents, who either failed to realize she had been kidnapped for ''three years'' (Quentin) or arranged the kidnapping to save her other daughter in order to assuage her own guilt (Dinah). In the end, despite the parents' desperate attempts to blame the family's issues on Oliver and his relationship with Laurel, all the relationship actually did was just expose and magnify the problems that were already there.

** When drunk at least, Quentin is verbally and emotionally abusive to Laurel as well; and (just like Dinah) blames Laurel for what happened to Sara. The fact that he was too busy drinking and wallowing in self-pity to notice that Laurel was missing for ''three years'' doesn't speak well of him either.
** Ra's is also harsh and dismissive to Nyssa.

** Sara as well, who still traumatized by the ''Amazo'' has been eaten alive by guilt for years.

* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: The moment Oliver learns what happened to Laurel, he devotes all his energy into finding a way to free her.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Despite everything that's happened between them, Oliver and Laurel still love each other. Oliver trains his ass off so he can save Laurel from the League, and Laurel loses all control of herself and has to be restrained when it seems like [[spoiler:he's about to be killed by Ra's al Ghul during their duel for her freedom]].

* CurbStompBattle: [[spoiler:Ra's utterly destroys Oliver in their fight, and it only ends in MutualKill because Ra's got cocky and dismissed the fight as over before it actually was, giving Oliver the opportunity to blindside him and break his neck]].
* DaddyDidntShow: Quentin promised Laurel he'd attend the mock trial she was in. She found him drunk in bar after it was over.

** Dinah Lance refuses to accept that Sara is dead, and actually manages to track her down to the League of Assassins headquarters. What comes next is the more horrifying aspects of such determination.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Dinah's choice, which Oliver lampshades. In her desperation to save Sara, she made the rash choice to trade Laurel, knowing she would lose one daughter in exchange for the other. She failed to account for how Sara herself would feel about the trade; once she finally got out of shock, Sara crossed the DespairEventHorizon all over again and has been a shadow of herself ever since. Essentially, in trying to save one daughter, [[DeathSeeker she destroyed both of them]].

** The final step in training of the League is to have one of these with a fellow recruit.
** [[spoiler:Oliver and Ra's have one to determine Laurel's fate]].
* DysfunctionalFamily: Like many of Ray_Writes' stories, the Lances. It's telling that the person who ultimately came through for Laurel in the end was the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister (even if said ex-boyfriend has [[TookALevelInKindness changed]] ''significantly'' since they last saw each other) and the aforementioned sister instead of her parents, who either failed to realize she had been kidnapped for ''three years'' (Quentin) or arranged the kidnapping to save her other daughter in order to assuage her own guilt (Dinah). In the end, despite the parents' desperate attempts to blame the family's issues on Oliver and his relationship with Laurel, all the relationship actually did was just expose the problems that were already there.

* {{Foil}}: Oliver and Sara to Quentin and Dinah. Quentin was too stuck on himself and his alcohol to realize his eldest daughter had been kidnapped for ''years'', while Oliver, the boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister, managed to figure out what happened to her once he had all the facts near-instantly, and then trained his ass off to rescue her. Dinah traded Laurel to the League to save Sara and felt little to no guilt about it due to her InsaneTrollLogic rationalizations, while Sara recognized how horrible the "trade" was, regretted it immediately and all but destroyed herself in her remorse, before throwing her lot in with the first person she knew who had the will and means to save her sister years later. In the end, the two people who betrayed Laurel the most are the only ones to prove their love for her and come through for her, while the parents that were supposed comfort and protect her failed to do so in every way imaginable.

* ItsAllAboutMe: It becomes very clear that Dinah's decision isn't driven so much by the desire to save Sara as it is to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go onto the ''Gambit''.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Both Tommy and Thea end up on Oliver's trip to the Himalayas. Tommy because he provided the plane, Thea because she snuck on. The thing is, they have no idea ''why'' Oliver is going to the Himalayas (and why he took Sara with him), and neither of the aforementioned two, nor Diggle, are talking. It isn't until [[spoiler:Malcolm]] enters the picture that they get some idea of what is actually going on.

* SlutShaming: As one flashback shows, if Laurel wore a skirt instead of pants, Quentin would dismiss her as a slut; and say that was what allowed Oliver to use her to get to, and kill Sara.

* VillainRespect: Ra's al Ghul is impressed by Dinah's dedication to find her daughter, and is willing to make a trade out of respect for it.
** [[spoiler:When Laurel gets Oliver to release Nyssa from the League, Malcolm (who was planning on killing her to as a show of force) is impressed and notes that Laurel was always clever.]]
* YourMakeUpIsRunning: Defied. Despite how hurt she is after a fight with her father, Laurel refuses to cry on the grounds that she will ''not'' have runny make up over this.

** When drunk at least, Quentin is verbally and emotionally abusive to Laurel as well; and (just like Dinah) blames Laurel for what happened to Sara.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Deconstructed. Oliver's decision to invite Sara onto the ''Gambit'' exposes the Lances' DysfunctionJunction and ultimately destroys the family. It's deconstructed in that, again, all Oliver actually did was invite Sara; everything that followed was result of the Lances' choices, not him, and when it comes down to it he's actually relatively blameless in comparison. However, the Lances' SelectiveObliviousness and ParentalFavoritism means that they'd rather use him and Laurel as scapegoats rather than acknowledge their own faults in the situation.

* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: On top of what she went through in canon (Oliver and Sara's infidelity and "deaths", her mother abandoning her, and her father's shoddy treatment of he) being been handed over to the League by her own mother have left Laurel in a ''much'' worse state than her show counterpart.

* BleedEmAndWeep: After her first kill, Laurel is deeply rattled but manages to stay composed. After her first assassination, she completely breaks down and vomits up everyting in her stomach. Nyssa reassures her that's a common reaction.

* CurbStompBattle: [[spoiler:Ra's utterly destroys Oliver in a fight, it only ends in MutualKill because Ra's gets cocky' the and dismisses the fight as over before it really is.]]

* DysfunctionalFamily: Like many of Ray_Writes' stories, the Lances. It's telling that the person who ultimately came through for Laurel in the end was the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister (even if said ex-boyfriend has [[TookALevelInKindness changed]] ''significantly'' since they last saw each other) and the aforementioned sister instead of her parents, who either failed to realize she had been kidnapped for ''three years'' (Quentin) or arranged the kidnapping to save her their other daughter in order to assuage her own guilt (Dinah).
* EntertaininglyWrong: When Thea freeloads onto Oliver's plane trip to the Himalayas and sees Sara there with him, she initially believes they're trying to hook up again. At this point, [[ShipSinking the last person Oliver wants to be in a relationship with is Sara]].
* EveryoneHasStandards: Nyssa finds the manner in which Laurel "joined" the League, and the threat against her city to keep her in line, utterly repulsive. So much so that she even promised Laurel that she would release her from her vow the moment she became Ra's. Unfortunately, the present time shows that there was no way Laurel would've been able to last that long.

* GuiltComplex: Oliver blames himself for Laurel's fate. While he does share some of the blame, it's tangential at best, and the ones really at fault are Dinah and, to a lesser extent, Sara. Even Laurel acknowledges this in the flashback where she finds out he's alive, though part of her is understandably still angry at him.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Part of what convinces Oliver that there is something wrong about Laurel's disappearance. She is too confrontational to use the SilentTreatment; and even if she left Starling City, she would return just to tell him and Sara how much they hurt her.

** Whatever is left Oliver and Sara's relationship is unsalvageable after he learns about what happened to Laurel. The two can hardly consider each other to be friends now, let alone anything more than that.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: What most people thought Laurel did when the League took her. Thea at least, didn't blame her for wanting to leave.

** Also, Peter Declan is executed as Oliver does not have a lawyer to help him with his crusade. CNRI is shut down as since Laurel doesn't work there, Oliver, Tommy, and Moira don't care about it enough to hold a fundraiser for it; to them it's just a legal aid office. Firefly manages to kill ''all'' his targets (and himself), since in canon Joanna told Laurel about it, who in turn told Oliver.

** Sara just got out of a traumatic experience that saw her suffer several near-death experiences, a bad case of StockholmSyndrome, and the presumed death of her only remaining friend (Oliver). She was so badly in shock and so desperate to go home that she is literally unable to scrounge up more than a token protest when her mother trades her sister for her. Unsurprisingly, when she finally gets out of said shock and realizes what she and her mother just did, she falls into a pit of self-hatred that leaves her a shadow of herself with implied DeathSeeker tendencies. While it doesn't completely excuse her from what happened, it does make her more sympathetic than everyone involved in the situation besides Oliver and Laurel herself.

** Sara doesn't have the trauma of joining the League of Assassins; instead, she has the guilt of living with the fact that her mother traded her sister for her freedom. As a result, she's arguably an even bigger DeathSeeker than both Oliver and Laurel.

* TrainingFromHell: Laurel's training with the League gets an in-depth look. As expected, it's every bit as breaking as Oliver's was.

* DysfunctionalFamily: Like many of Ray_Writes' stories, the Lances. It's telling that the person who ultimately came through for Laurel in the end was the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister (even if said ex-boyfriend has [[TookALevelInKindness changed]] ''significantly'' since they last saw each other) and the aforementioned sister instead of her parents, who either failed to realize she had been kidnapped (Quentin) for ''three years'' or arranged the kidnapping to save her their other daughter in order to assuage her own guilt (Dinah).

* AbusiveParents: Dinah is emotionally abusive to Laurel, though Laurel doesn't really realize it until Dinah sells her out to the League to get Sara back.

* BigSisterInstinct: ''Very'' darkly invoked. Dinah justifies trading Laurel for Sara under the "rational" that as Sara's big sister, Laurel knows it is her responsibility to protect Sara.

* {{Determinator}}: Dinah Lance refuses to accept that Sara is dead, and actually manages to track her down to the League of Assassins headquarters. What comes next is the more horrifying aspects of such determination.

* DuelToTheDeath: The final step in training of the League is to have one of these with a fellow recruit.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Nyssa finds the manner in which Laurel "joined" the League, and the threat against her city to keep her in line, utterly repulsive.

* ForWantOfANail: Laurel's absence has a subtle, but still overt effect on the events of the first season. Oliver is a lot harder than he was in canon, and Quentin wasn't able to hold his job as a detective down (or indeed, stay on the force at all) without her to help moderate his drinking. However, things don't really go off the rails until Oliver realizes that Laurel didn't actually leave Starling willingly. [[spoiler:This eventually leads to the death of Ra's al Ghul two seasons earlier than in canon. Oliver replaces him, subsequently releases both Laurel ''and'' Nyssa from their vows, and gives control of the League to Malcolm, who in turn lets go of Walter and gives up his plans for the Undertaking]].

* HateSink: Dinah Lance. Selling out one daughter to save the other is bad enough, but when you try to rationalize by victim-blaming the daughter you betrayed for what happened to the other one, you're gonna make everyone with a shred of decency that finds out want you dead.

* IveComeTooFar: Part of Dinah's rational for trading Laurel for Sara. She acknowledges that between [[ParentalAbandonment abandoning Laurel]] and letting Sara get on the ''Gambit'', she's already lost Laurel. But she won't lose Sara too.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Both Tommy and Thea end up on Oliver's trip to the Himalayas. Tommy because he provided the plane, Thea because she snuck on. The thing is, they have no idea ''why'' Oliver is going to the Himalayas (and why he took Sara with him), and neither of them are talking. It isn't until [[spoiler:Malcolm]] enters the picture that they get some idea of what is actually going on.
* ParentalFavoritism: '''Dinah'''. '''Lance'''. She even goes as far as to blame ''Laurel'' for what happened to Sara just because she was the one who was dating Oliver and brought him into their lives. She refuses to admit that Sara's choices were her own and she only has herself (and unbeknownst to everyone, Malcolm Merlyn) to blame for what happened.
** Even before that the ''Gambit'', Laurel was aware that ''both'' of her parents favored Sara, even if she (Laurel) was the one they were proud of.

* ShipSinking: Any hopes of Oliver/Sara die after Oliver finds out about Laurel's fate. The two constantly bicker and Oliver can barely stand to look at her, let alone be in her presence.
** Nyssa is very comforting to Laurel, and Laurel even thinks in another life she could have fallen in love with Nyssa; but the circumstances of Laurel's membership to the League prevent anything from developing.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: Oliver refuses to believe that Laurel disappearing shortly before Sara returned can be a coincidence, and he's right.
** When Walter is kidnapped, Thea is worried that it's the same people that took Laurel. This time, it really is a coincidence.

* CurbStompBattle: [[spoiler:Ra's utterly destroys Oliver in a fight, it only ends in MutualKill because Ra's gets cocky.]]

* ForWantOfANail: Laurel's absence has a subtle, but still overt effect on the events of the first season. Oliver is a lot harder than he was in canon, and Quentin wasn't able to hold his job as a detective down without her to help moderate his drinking. However, things don't really go off the rails until Oliver realizes that Laurel didn't actually leave Starling willingly. [[spoiler:This eventually leads to the death of Ra's al Ghul two seasons earlier than in canon. Oliver replaces him, subsequently releases both Laurel ''and'' Nyssa from their vows, and gives control of the League to Malcolm, who in turn lets go of Walter and gives up his plans for the Undertaking]].

* GuiltComplex: Oliver blames himself for Laurel's fate. While he does share some of the blame, it's tangential at best, and the ones really at fault are Dinah and, to a lesser extent, Sara. Even Laurel acknowledges this.
* InternalReveal: In the flashbacks, Laurel learns Oliver survived the ''Gambit'' from Maseo, who recognized her from the picture of her he carried around.

** Malcolm isn't an idiot. Once he learns Oliver is going to the Himalayas, it doesn't take long for him to figure out where Laurel's actually been for the last three years.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Both Tommy and Thea end up on Oliver's trip to the Himalayas. Tommy because he provided the plane, Thea because she snuck on. The thing is, they have no idea ''why'' Oliver is going to the Himalayas (and why he took Sara with him).

''[[https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551355 Blackbird]]'' is a series of fan fics by [[https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ray_Writes/pseuds/Ray_Writes Ray_Writes]]. It explores an AlternateUniverse where it was Sara who went on the yacht with Oliver, and yet it's Laurel who ends up with the League of Assassins. As for how, well...

* AbsuiveParents: Dinah is emotionally abusive to Laurel, though Laurel doesn't really realize it until Dinah sells her out to the League to get Sara back.