History Fanfic / BlackbirdArrow

* {{Blackmail}}: [[spoiler:Malcolm uses Walter's safety to force Oliver into making him his successor as Ra's al Ghul]].
* BlamingTheVictim: Dinah tries to justify her decision to trade Laurel for Sara by blaming ''Laurel'' for bringing Oliver into their lives. Her reasoning is that if Laurel hadn't befriended and later dated him, he wouldn't have tried to blow up their relationship by taking Sara on the ''Gambit'' with him and Sara would have never gotten on it. It's such a bad case of InsaneTrollLogic that even the traumatized Sara immediately tries to refute it, and the only reason she doesn't succeed is because Dinah talks over her and tries to bully her into accepting the latter's decision. Naturally, nobody else accepts that line of thinking either and the entire situation just serves to make Dinah a bigger HateSink.

** Sara as well, who is still traumatized by the ''Amazo'' and has been eaten alive by the guilt of what happened to Laurel for years.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: Dinah is convinced that her decision to let Sara go on the ''Gambit'' has already cost her Laurel (who she believes would never forgive her if she found out the truth about Sara's presence on the boat), and uses that as resolve to go through with trading Laurel for Sara, as she refuses to lose Sara as well. All her actions do is ensure that she loses both anyway, and neither of them can forgive her for her decision or for making Sara go along with it.

** 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.

** It also deconstructs the idea that Oliver "destroyed" the Lance family by "seducing" Sara. In addition to the above point of Sara choosing to go with Oliver on her own, the events of the story show that [[BigScrewedUpFamily the Lance family had several preexisting problems]] even before the ''Gambit'', and what happened to Sara just blew it all out in the open and made those problems worse, eventually culminating in Laurel's horrific forced induction into the League. All of this suggests that even without the ''Gambit'' sinking, some other tragedy would've eventually caused the Lances to fall apart as a family. Ultimately, Oliver's role in what happened is so minor that both Sara and Laurel herself refuse put any of the blame on him, rightfully blaming either themselves (in the case of the former) or Dinah (in the case of the latter) instead. Oliver himself seems to have stopped taking responsibility for Sara being on the ''Gambit'', though he still acknowledges that his betrayal of Laurel was wrong.

** While it's justified by how desperate she is, Sara put relatively little thought into how was she going to free Laurel, figuring that Oliver alone would be enough since he could fight. She doesn't factor in how Oliver being able to fight does not necessarily mean he is a better fighter than whoever he might need to kill in order to free Laurel, or how Ra's will react to ''another'' person trying to free her sister. The end result is that Ra's grows tired of the matter entirely and decides that if Oliver loses their duel, both he ''and'' Laurel will die. [[spoiler:The duel itself sees Oliver ''barely'' win, mostly by dumb luck, and even then he would've died not longer after his victory had it not been for the Lazarus Pit]].

** The story deconstructs the show's favoritism towards Sara, including the tendency to gloss over her betrayal of Laurel by choosing to go on the ''Gambit'' with Oliver, and pin the blame for what happened on Oliver and, to some extent, Laurel. While yes, what happened to Sara was horrible and by no means any way deserved, it doesn't absolve her of the guilt of her choices, and pinning the blame on others is ultimately wrong. In this story, such favoritism leads to Dinah (who was the one that let Sara go in the first place) using Sara's trauma to justify trading Laurel to the League of Assassins in exchange for her younger daughter's freedom and convincing Sara to go along with it. Instead, this act effectively dissolves whatever sympathy anyone outside of Dinah might have for Sara's situation, as Laurel did absolutely nothing to deserve such a cruel fate and had been mourning Sara as much as the rest of her sister's friends and family. Oliver, Tommy, Thea, Moira, and Walter are all appalled with Sara and Dinah when they find out, while Sara herself is now a guilt-ridden wreck with DeathSeeker tendencies.

** Oliver and Sara's friendship becomes strained after Oliver learns the truth about what happened to Laurel. While he still cares about Sara, he cannot find it in himself to forgive her for her part in what happened. As a result of that, their relationship loses its romantic potential as well, and when Laurel is saved, he makes no attempt to convince her to reconcile with Sara like he did in canon.

** Oliver and Sara's friendship becomes strained after Oliver learns the truth about what happened to Laurel. While he still cares about Sara, he cannot find it in himself to forgive her for her part in what happened. As a result of that, their relationship loses its romantic potential as well.

* AllForNothing: Part of Dinah's rationalization for trading Laurel for Sara is because she refused to lose Sara again after going so far to find her in the first place, trying to justify it by claiming that she already lost Laurel when she allowed Sara to go on the ''Gambit''. Instead, all that decision does is cause her to lose Sara anyway, as being forced to go along with the trade drove her younger daughter over the DespairEventHorizon and left her completely unable to recover from her trauma until Laurel is finally rescued from the League. Once that happens, Sara ditches Dinah for Quentin without a second thought, calling life with her mother "stifling". In the end, instead of saving one daughter, Dinah ends up losing both, and only has herself to blame.

* DeconstructedCharacterArchetype: Of MamaBear, and overprotective parents in general. Dinah has an almost obsessive desire to protect Sara from everything that might negatively affect her life, including any potential consequences her daughter might face for her actions. However, this desire doesn't spring from any genuine love for Sara but rather because [[{{Narcissist}} she sees herself in her younger daughter]]. That leads her to make poor parenting choices such as letting Sara run off to sleep with her sister Laurel's boyfriend just because she's convinced she's in love (rather than telling her the truth, namely that Oliver was just using her), to taking drastic measures to protect her daughter that Sara wouldn't agree with or would cause her emotional distress, [[ParentalBetrayal such as trading Laurel to the League in exchange for her sister's freedom]]. The end result sees Sara so damaged by her mother's actions that she's unable to make any step toward a recovery from her trauma for several years. In the end, it's clear she would've been much better off had Dinah been less protective and tried not to shield her from everything.

** Brutally subverted with Dinah and Sara. Dinah tries to portray her decision to trade Laurel for Sara as this, but it's blatantly obvious to everyone that she really did it to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go on the ''Gambit'', and that she doesn't care about Sara at all.

** It also deconstructs the idea that Oliver "destroyed" the Lance family by "seducing" Sara. In addition to the above point of Sara choosing to go with Oliver on her own, the events of the story show that [[BigScrewedUpFamily the Lance family had several preexisting problems]] even before the ''Gambit'', and what happened to Sara just blew it all out in the open and made those problems worse, eventually culminating in Laurel's horrific forced induction into the League. All of this suggests that even without the ''Gambit'' sinking, some other tragedy would've eventually caused the Lances to fall apart as a family. Ultimately, Oliver's role in what happened is so minor that both Sara and Laurel herself refuse put any of the blame on him, rightfully blaming either themselves (in the case of the former) or Dinah (in the case of the latter) instead.

** Having a parent who is willing to do anything for you is not always a good thing. One of the driving factors that led to Laurel being traded to the League is the absolutely terrible job her parents did of raising her younger sister Sara, who could do no wrong in their eyes and thus had her self-serving behavior constantly enabled by them. Eventually, this causes Sara to believe it's alright to betray her sister and sleep with said sister's boyfriend because she thinks she herself is 'in love' with him, which led to the ''Gambit'' and the ''Amazo''. Then, after Dinah finds Sara with the League, she is so desperate to free her daughter and bring her home that she ends up trading her ''other daughter'' to them to make it happen, leaving Sara a guilt-ridden, traumatized mess who is incapable of caring for herself and unable to make any progress towards a recovery for several years. When it comes down to it, Dinah's obsessive need to protect Sara from everything, including any fault for her actions, is the true cause for why Sara's life has become such a wreck.

** Brutally subverted with Dinah and Sara. Dinah tries to portray her decision to trade Laurel for Sara as this, but it's blatantly obvious to everyone that she really did it to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go on the ''Gambit''.

* ActOfTrueLove: After learning the truth about Laurel's disappearance, Oliver risks his life to rescue her from the League of Assassins, including willingly entering a DuelToTheDeath with the vastly more trained and skilled Ra's al Ghul. [[spoiler:This nearly kills him, but seeing a struggling Laurel trying to interfere with the duel to help him and knowing she will die with him if he doesn't win [[ThePowerOfLove gives Oliver]] the HeroicSecondWind he needs to kill Ra's and ensure Laurel's freedom]].

* MuggingTheMonster: It becomes fairly obvious early on that Oliver has no idea what he's up against when it comes to Ra's al Ghul, only knowing him as the man who trained the Dark Archer and is holding Laurel hostage. Part of this is because he got faulty information from Sara, who never saw Ra's fight in person in this AU or learned how to fight herself. Therefore, while she knows he's dangerous, she doesn't know just how badly he outclasses Oliver, otherwise she would've never sent Oliver to save Laurel for fear of getting him killed as well. [[spoiler:The only reason Oliver even survives the duel is because Ra's got cocky at the wrong moment and gave Oliver the opening he needed to win at the last possible second]].

** Fault. To be exact, to what extent can you blame someone else for your actions? The most sympathetic characters in the story, Oliver, Laurel, and Sara, are all characters who are willing to take responsibility for their choices -- arguably, ''too much'' responsibility. Oliver tries to take the blame for Laurel's time in the League, even though he literally had nothing to do with that sequence of events beyond inviting Sara to go with him on the ''Gambit''; Laurel feels massive guilt for all the assassinations she had to conduct for the League, despite the fact that she was forced to do all those things under the threat of death for all her loved ones and millions of innocent people; and Sara is determined to blame herself for everything, ignoring how much her mother enabled and manipulated her. Meanwhile, the least sympathetic characters in the story, Quentin and Dinah, are people who do everything to ignore their culpability in the situation. Quentin downplays his poor treatment of Laurel after the ''Gambit'', which caused him to completely miss the fact she had been kidnapped for three years, and Dinah flat out [[NeverMyFault refuses to take any responsibility at all]], trying to use Oliver and Laurel as [[TheScapegoat scapegoats]] for her terrible parenting. Notably, it's only when Quentin begins taking responsibility for his treatment of Laurel that he becomes a more sympathetic character, to the point that everyone decides to keep him LockedOutOfTheLoop for fear of [[DespairEventHorizon his possible reaction to truth]].

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In the flashbacks, all Sara wants is to go home. She gets the chance... after her mother decides to trade her innocent older sister to the League in place of Sara. To say Sara regrets this decision would be a ''vast'' understatement.

** Fault. To be exact, to what extent can you blame someone else for your actions? The most sympathetic characters in the story, Oliver, Laurel, and Sara, are all characters who are willing to take responsibility for their choices -- arguably, ''too much'' responsibility. Oliver tries to take the blame for Laurel's time in the League, even though he literally had nothing to do with that sequence of events beyond inviting Sara to go with him on the ''Gambit''; Laurel feels massive guilt for all the assassinations she had to conduct for the League, despite the fact that she was forced to do all those things under the threat of death for all her loved ones and millions of innocent people; and Sara is determined to blame herself for everything, ignoring how much her mother enabled and manipulated her. Meanwhile, the least sympathetic characters in the story, Quentin and Dinah, are people who do everything to ignore their culpability in the situation. Quentin downplays his poor treatment of Laurel after the ''Gambit'', which caused him to completely miss the fact she had been kidnapped for three years, and Dinah flat out [[NeverMyFault refuses to take any responsibility at all]], trying to use Oliver and Laurel as [[TheScapegoat scapegoats]] for her terrible parenting. Notably, it's only when Quentin begins taking responsibility for his treatment of Laurel that he becomes more sympathetic character, to the point that the other characters decide to keep him LockedOutOfTheLoop out of fear of [[DespairEventHorizon his possible reaction to truth]].

** Fault. To be exact, to what extent can you blame someone else for your actions? The most sympathetic characters in the story, Oliver, Laurel, and Sara, are all characters who are willing to take responsibility for their choices -- arguably, ''too much'' responsibility. Oliver tries to take the blame for Laurel's time in the League, even though he literally had nothing to do with that sequence of events beyond inviting Sara to go with him on the ''Gambit''; Laurel feels massive guilt for all the assassinations she had to conduct for the League, despite the fact that she was forced to do all those things under the threat of death for all her loved ones and millions of innocent people; and Sara is determined to blame herself for everything, ignoring how much her mother enabled and manipulated her. Meanwhile, the least sympathetic characters in the story, Quentin and Dinah, are people who do everything to ignore their culpability in the situation. Quentin downplays his poor treatment of Laurel after the ''Gambit'', which caused him to completely miss the fact she had been kidnapped for three years, and Dinah flat out [[NeverMyFault refuses to take any responsibility at all]], trying to use Oliver and Laurel as [[TheScapegoat scapegoats]] for her terrible parenting.

** Fault. To be exact, to what extent can you blame someone else for your actions? Originally, the Lances (including, to some extent, Laurel) are perfectly content to blame Oliver for what happened to Sara, since he's the one who chose to blow up his relationship with Laurel by having an affair with Sara and invited the latter onto the ''Gambit''. But after Dinah trades Laurel to the League in exchange for Sara's freedom, using Laurel's relationship with Oliver as justification, Laurel and later everyone else is forced to review the situation with far more clarity and acknowledge that what happened was never Oliver's fault to begin with. He didn't cause the boat to sink, and Sara's presence on it was because she ''chose'' to go on it, not because Oliver forced her to be there. By the time Oliver and her reunite, it's clear Laurel no longer blames him at all for what happened, and neither does anyone else outside of [[LockedOutOfTheLoop Quentin]] and [[NeverMyFault Dinah]].

** Fault. To be exact, to what extent can you blame someone else for your actions? Originally, the Lances (including, to some extent, Laurel) are perfectly content to blame Oliver for what happened to Sara, since he's the one who chose to blow up his relationship with Laurel by having an affair with Sara and invited the latter onto the ''Gambit''. But after Dinah trades Laurel to the League in exchange for Sara's freedom, using Laurel's relationship with Oliver as justification, Laurel and later everyone else is forced to review the situation with far more clarity and acknowledge that what happened was never Oliver's fault to begin with. He didn't cause the boat sink, and Sara's presence on it was because she ''chose'' to go on it, not because Oliver forced her to be there. By the time Oliver and her reunite, it's clear Laurel no longer blames him at all for what happened, and neither does anyone else outside of [[LockedOutOfTheLoop Quentin]] and [[NeverMyFault Dinah]].

* CentralTheme: Betrayal. Namely, to what extent can betrayal be forgiven? Laurel is faced with three different betrayals in the first story, and to each one she reacts differently. She decides to forgive Oliver's betrayal, because it's relatively minor, he's genuinely remorseful for it, and he made up for it a thousand times over [[spoiler:by fighting Ra's al Ghul to free her, something that nearly killed him]]. She is on the fence about Sara's betrayal, because Sara has yet to sincerely apologize for it and her betrayal was so much worse, regardless of her obvious guilt. And she refuses to forgive Dinah's betrayal, because it was the worst one of them all, and Dinah has yet to show an inch of regret for any of it.