Fanfic / The Cutting Edge

The Cutting Edge is a series of Arrowverse fan fics written by Ray_Writes depicting a Peggy Sue Alternate Universe where Laurel Lance is sent back in time by the Monitor, Mar Novu, to five years before her death to prepare the heroes of the world for the Crisis.

The first story of the series is called One More Time, depicting the events from Laurel's initial Time Travel and through the events of Season One of Arrow.

Summaries

One More Time

Upon her death, Laurel is made an offer by a being named Mar Novu to be sent back in time and correct Earth-1's timeline, as it is rapidly spiraling out of the Monitor's control.

Now, just under five years into her past and armed only with a partial knowledge of the timeline and a certainty she is not the right person for the job, Laurel must unite six Paragons and as many additional heroes as possible to face a coming Crisis. What changes will she make, and will they be the right ones? Time is ticking to save the world.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Quentin has a tendency to verbally and emotionally abuse Laurel when he's drunk. Barbara Gordon even refers to him as Laurel's abuser when talking to her.
• Adaptation Deviation: invokedIn the prologue alone, it's revealed that the Paragons are different: Clark Kent is the Paragon of Hope, Diana of Themyscira is the Paragon of Truth, and Oliver Queen is the Paragon of Courage. In addition, Sara Lance is still a Paragon, but she is the Paragon of Resilience, not Destiny. In the comments, Word of God implies that Novu withheld the seventh Paragon from Laurel, to hide that she is that Paragon.
• Adaptation Name Change: As a result of the different circumstances of her return home, Sara rejects the name "Canary" due to the implications of her ties to the League; Laurel gives her the new name "Halcyon", after a bird that makes its nest on waters and (according to Greek myth) could calm the waves.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • As a result of Thea's close call, Moira Queen hires John Diggle as Thea's bodyguard rather than Oliver's.
  • Sara appears in Chapter 6, well over a year before she originally appeared in the present storyline in canon.
  • Iris West has a brief cameo in Chapter 8, but since Laurel never met her in the original timeline, nothing comes of it.
  • Laurel encounters Samantha and William Clayton in Chapter 8 as well.
  • By Chapter 10, Rene Ramierez has joined Ted and Laurel in the Wildcat Gym.
  • Barry Allen appears in Chapter 10.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: As well as Laurel going from just one of the team to being regarded as essentially the "face" of Starling's vigilante movement, her presence has a particular impact on Helena Bertinelli's relationship with the other heroes; where Helena tried to shoot Laurel with a crossbow in their last meeting in canon, here she hugs Laurel in gratitude for being trusted with her secret.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Discussed. At Malcolm's funeral, Laurel claims that she'd "be dancing a jig over his grave if [she] could get away with it."
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • When Nyssa asks Laurel why gives criminals second chances, she asks Nyssa why she gave Sara a chance. Nyssa doesn't answer, but also stops asking Laurel why she believes in helping the people of her city.
  • When Helena objects to the idea of her joining Canary's team full-time, Laurel prompts Helena to acknowledge that she wants a life after she's dismantled her father's operation by pointing out that surviving his arrest would be the best kind of revenge.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Laurel's glimpse into the Bad Future includes seeing a nuke going off, John and Thea leaving the team, the deaths of Samantha, Quentin, and Oliver... and Oliver walking away from Felicity.
• Ascended Extra: Laurel likely feels that she has become this, considering that she was just part of the Arrow's team in the original timeline but now the police department has identified her as the leader of the vigilantes as the only one to have been seen with every new vigilante that's emerged in Starling City over the past year, even before they appear as a complete team.
• The Atoner: Oliver does a minor example of this when he's inspired to give Laurel a list of all the lies he told her before he was trapped on Lian Yu, apologizing for everything from flirting with waitresses when he went out with Tommy to lying about being ready to move in with her.
• Avengers Assemble: Chapter 20 opens with Starling City's vigilantes (Oliver, Laurel, Ted, Rene, Sara, John, Helena and Naomi) all coming together for the first time to confirm that they will coordinate their efforts to save the city from this point on.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Laurel is able to deduce that Batman is Bruce Wayne, noting that only a billionaire could afford his toys, and Batman and Bruce Wayne being in Starling City the same night is unlikely to be a coincidence. Further, she and Sara both noted that Bruce had been casing the room earlier, already giving them cause to suspect something. This, in turn, allows Batman to deduce her identity, as his being at C.N.R.I.'s fundraiser wouldn't have made the tabloids yet, so the Black Canary must have been there as well; and Laurel Lance is the right height, build, has the same shade of green eyes, and he muses that "while they had danced that she moved with a fighter’s grace".
• Bad Boss: Malcolm doesn't let the cleaning staff for his building use the main parking garage, forcing them to use a public lot instead. Which works in Laurel's favor when she needs to infiltrate the building as the public lots don't have security cameras.
• Bad Future: Novu convinces Laurel to go back by showing her flashes of the canon timeline after her death. This includes John and Thea leaving the team, Samantha Clayton's death, Quentin's death, Oliver being forced to leave a tearful Felicity to fulfill his own bargain with Novu, and Oliver's death after facing off against the army of Shadow Demons on Earth-38.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Laurel has this in spades for both Sara and Thea. One of her biggest desires is to get Sara out of the League early, and one of the first things she does after being sent back is try to reconnect with Thea and convince her to go clean. She accomplishes both.
  • Oliver nearly beats Kyle to death for trying to shoot Thea.
• Blood Knight: Laurel is a low-key example. According to invokedWord of God, she was the only member of Team Arrow to actually enjoy being a vigilante. While sparring with Oliver, he notes the spark in her eyes and can tell that she loves fighting.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Oliver already knew that Robert Queen had his flaws, but he is forced to face that knowledge directly during the Restons' attempt to sue the company for unfair dismissal as he learns how the company openly cheated them out of compensation.
  • During the mob war, Helena's faith in the team takes a knock when she hears Green Arrow make a deal with the Bratva, to the extent that she compares it to Nudocerdo's own deal with the mobs. However, Batman and Laurel are able to help Helena accept that the Arrow at least uses that connection to save lives rather than take them, even if all parties acknowledge that it will take time for Helena to come to terms with that revelation.
• Brutal Honesty: After Quentin complains about Laurel trying to spend time with him like back in the old days before the Gambit, his partner Lucas Hilton flat-out tells him that his inability to move on from Sara's death is only hurting the daughter he has left.
• Catholic School Girls Rule: Not a major part of their relationship, but Naomi muses at one point that seeing Thea in her school uniform is the first time she's understood the appeal of this particular fetish.
• The Chosen Many: The Monitor states that there are at least six heroes who Laurel must track down so that they can become the Paragons for the future Crisis: Clark Kent, the Paragon of Hope; Sara Lance the Paragon of Resilience; Diana of Themyscira, the Paragon of Truth; Oliver Queen, the Paragon of Courage; J'onn J'onzz, the Paragon of Honor; and Barry Allen, the Paragon of Love.
• Combat by Champion: Laurel invokes this during the Mob War, challenging China White to a duel with the caveat that if she wins, the Triad pulls out of the fighting. After a hard fight, Laurel comes out victorious, forcing the Triad to pull out as per the agreement and making things much easier for the vigilantes.
• Commuting on a Bus: After the mob war, Helena relocates to Gotham where Batman can keep an eye on her conflict with the mobs and ensure she won't go too far.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: A variation. Laurel is in deep denial over the fact that Quentin is abusive, and shrugs off his harsh comments about the Black Canary as "he couldn't know he was cursing his own daughter's name, and even if he had said worse to her face before".
• Demoted to Extra: A chain of events lead to Adam Hunt being arrested before Oliver can go after him as the Hood. Also, as part of his attempt to show Laurel he's changed while trying to win her back, Oliver explicitly avoids Felicity as his computer consultant because he's concerned that he'd give Felicity the wrong impression when he wants to show Laurel he can be better. He's so quick to dismiss Felicity as a technical consultant that by the time he meets her in person he's already forgotten her surname and isn't entirely sure of her first name. Then Felicity is written out of the main storyline for the foreseeable future after she's fired from QC and hooks up with her dad as his new cyber-criminal protege.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Thea tries to pay the Restons on behalf of her family, and ends up being captured by Kyle who misinterpreted her actions as an attempted bribe.
  • Felicity is forced to commit corporate espionage for Ted Daniels under the threat of her life. Rather than doing the sensible thing and reporting it to the authorities and her superiors, she instead tries to frame Naomi for her actions in order to completely absolve herself of any wrongdoing. As pointed out by Walter, if she had just come forward from the start, he would have never fired her for the espionage since she was clearly under duress. Her actions against Naomi, however, are inexcusable, purely self-serving, and more than warrants termination.
  • Quentin feels that this applies to him when he rejects Black Canary's attempt to reach out to him, as he reflects that he could have pretended to be willing to become her police contact to eventually lure her into a trap.
• Dirty Cop: Corruption in the Starling PD is deep, and goes all the way to Commissioner Nudocerdo, who more or less admits to Quentin he's made a deal with the Italian Mafia.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Basically Laurel's philosophy when she adopts a vigilante outfit when she starts going out with Ted and Isaac, deliberately adopting a more basic costume than her familiar attire- such as a ski mask to hide her face- so that she doesn't look like an experienced fighter.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • One of the instructions Novu gives Laurel before she's sent back is that she needs to be in Central City the night of December 11th, 2013. While Laurel herself doesn't remember the importance of that date at first, the readers know that it's the date of the Particle Accelerator Explosion, and Novu is setting her up to get her metagene activated, allowing her to receive the Canary Cry (Laurel recalls the relevance of the date when her mother mentions the plans for the particle accelerator at Sara's birthday party the year before).
  • Any time Laurel assumes that Oliver has already started a relationship with Felicity.
  • Ted internally muses on how Laurel seems attracted to The Hood, before brushing it off with the fact that the only guy he has seen her have feelings for is Oliver.
  • While holding Black Canary as they go down a zip line, Oliver thinks about holding Laurel the same way.
  • When Oliver grabs Tommy from behind so he doesn't interrupt Moira and Walter's conversation that he's trying to listen in on, Tommy can't help but be reminded of the time he was abducted in Hong Kong before assuring himself that it's only Oliver.
  • After shooting Green Arrow, Moira thinks about how grateful she is that Oliver didn't see her resort to such violence.
  • When Quentin is at a bar and is informed that a blonde woman is asking to speak with him outside, he initially wonders if Laurel's decision to avoid alcohol is so extreme that she's refusing to even walk into a bar, and is surprised to find Black Canary is the one wanting to speak with him. He also thinks that his alcoholism must be impacting his abilities more than he thought if he couldn't notice the vigilante tracking him to learn his habits.
• Easily Forgiven: Played with. Laurel appears to have quickly forgiven those who wronged her (Sara, Samantha, and Oliver-even before he comes home), but in truth she's just had a few years to process it. She does muse at one point that she's going to need to come with an explanation for it all though.
• Entertainingly Wrong: It's not an "amusing" kind of entertaining, but there's a certain dark humor in Tommy starting to speculate that the Chinese Triad were responsible for sinking the Queen's Gambit and killing his father. On top of that, Moira muses that she initially speculated that the Hood might be Merlyn's "associate" operating under a new benefactor, although that was easily disproved as the Hood is clearly operating with a different agenda than Malcolm.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As in canon, Ra's is disgusted by the Undertaking, and kills Malcolm for planning it.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Nyssa isn't evil, but she was raised as an assassin, and cannot understand why Laurel spares criminals.
  • Likewise, Moira is more misguided than evil, but when the Hood states "I'm not going to hurt you" she immediately associates it with how Merlyn would always imply a threat if she didn't cooperate rather than consider the idea that the Hood genuinely won't hurt her.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Nyssa comments that even as a child she disliked Malcolm Merlyn. Laurel quips that it sounds like she had good taste even then.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Laurel notes that Elliot Estates is run by one of Gotham City's wealthiest families, referencing Batman/Batwoman villain Thomas "Tommy" Elliot AKA Hush; Elliot appears in the next chapter.
• Foreshadowing: Chapter 13 reveals that Tommy is planning to sell Merlyn Global to Stellmoor International... in other words, the company that Isabel Rochev works for.
• Frame-Up: Felicity frames Naomi for her own corporate espionage so she won't get fired. It isn't long until Oliver clears her name, but the entire experience sours Naomi on corporate life and she ends up rejecting QC's apology offer in favor of working for Oliver at his soup kitchen.
• Framing the Guilty Party: After Laurel, Nyssa and Sara abduct Malcolm to answer for his crimes before the League, Nyssa leaves a knife in the table to give the impression that Malcolm was abducted by the Triad or another local gang.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Laurel reflects that this applied to her and Barry in the future in particular, as they were just part of the same group but didn't interact much themselves.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Helena inadvertently does this when she's attacked by an assassin in her apartment, as the attacker rips open her nightshirt before Black Canary intervenes. Helena is uncomfortable as only her fiance ever saw that much of her before, but Laurel assures her that "this creep doesn't count".
• God Guise: When Mar Novu appears to Laurel after her death, she initially assumes he's some variation of God until he introduces himself and explains his true nature.
• Good Parents: Oliver reveals that he has actually inherited a good amount of money from Robert Queen that makes him financially independent of Moira's influence, prompting Laurel to muse that she should have expected that Malcolm would be more controlling as a parent.
• Heel–Face Turn: Laurel essentially does this for Garfield Lynns, as she finds him before he can plan his revenge, convinces him that suing those responsible for the fire that disfigured him is a better revenge, and gives Daniel de la Vega the chance to explain that Gar's team didn't abandon him but the building collapsed while they were trying to get him out.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • The Hood appears content to be this; even Batman was initially unaware of what happened to the money the Hood took from Thomas Elliot, but once Black Canary explains that it was donated to the victims of the Nodell Tower Fire the Dark Knight acknowledges that people wouldn't want to admit they received compensation under such circumstances.
  • After the mob war, Moira encourages Tempest's media contacts to make all the vigilantes this, feeling that the group should work to render the vigilantes ineffective and encourage their own views of social reform.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Laurel's greatest weakness as a character may be the idea that she has never been good enough for people on her own; when Sara challenges her to accept that her future knowledge will eventually become essentially irrelevant with all the changes she's made, Laurel reflects that she feels she won't be needed after that point as she feels that she herself has never been good enough for others.
• Honor Before Reason: From a public perspective, this would be Helena's reason for not accepting her father's offer to join him in witness protection, although for Helena her anger is motivated by her wider issues with her father and her new role as the Huntress.
• Humble Hero: While Laurel has self-esteem issues and feels that the people in her life can't be bothered with her, Ted Grant assures her that she's a rare kind of hero in that she's willing to follow the examples of others or take charge herself depending on the circumstances.
• Hypocritical Humor: After one meeting with Batman, Laurel privately reflects to herself that Oliver can't really criticize the Gotham vigilante for making abrupt exits when he's done the same himself.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • How Laurel feels about handing over Malcolm to the League, causing his death. She doesn't regret the action itself, knowing everything Malcolm had already done, was planning to do, and would've gone on to do had he lived. What she does regret is the pain it ends up causing Tommy.
  • Laurel notes that by getting Sara released from the League she is depriving Nyssa of the only person she loves, but wouldn't trade having Sara back for anything.
• I Have No Son!: Naomi was kicked out by her parents once she got her diploma because of her sexuality.
• I Know You Know I Know: Naomi and Oliver are each swiftly aware that she knows Oliver is the Hood, but it's only explicitly confirmed after Naomi is framed as a corporate spy, as Oliver knows that if she really was a spy she would have exposed him already.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Laurel is still in love with Oliver and considers him the love of her life, but thinks that Felicity is his One True Love and intends to make sure they can finally have their happy ending. This is only reinforced by the images of the Bad Future she sees, where they got back together, just like she thought they would. Seeing as this is an Oliver/Laurel fic, she is clearly not going to get what she wants.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Discussed when Laurel makes contact with Helena, pointing out to Helena that trying to dismantle her father's criminal operations proves that she truly wants justice, because if all she wanted was her father dead Helena could easily just shoot him at home.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance:
  • Oliver is back for a couple of weeks before he learns that there are other vigilantes currently active, both in Gotham and in Starling City.
  • With Malcolm's death, Moira assumes that his associate has just "moved on to greener pastures", still unaware that Malcolm was his own enforcer.
  • While Sara is aware of Laurel's status as a time-traveler, to date she is unaware that Laurel was sent back from the moment of her own death.
• Important Haircut: Thea has her shorter haircut at her eighteenth birthday, over a year and a half before she did in the original timeline.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite Laurel's efforts, Ted and Isaac's partnership still breaks up, although this time she is able to stop Isaac becoming a killer.
  • Nyssa came to Starling City a few years early, but it's implied she still had to beat up airport security.
  • Laurel and Roy's first interaction involves him stealing someone's purse. It isn't Thea's and Laurel easily catches him, but still.
  • Even with Diggle working as Thea's bodyguard rather than Oliver's, he starts to consider becoming a vigilante himself after seeing Black Canary's efforts producing results. The first vigilante he officially joins forces with is Oliver as well.
  • Falk (the Savior) is still inspired by vigilantes to begin his murderous quest for rampage, he just isn't inspired by The Hood. In fact, the fact that Laurel and Ted don't kill is a reason for him to begin, as he feels they aren't going far enough.
  • Much to Laurel's annoyance, Oliver is likely to still have to deal with Carrie Cutter AKA "Cupid", after he saved her life during the vigilantes' battle with the mobs.
• Inspired by…: The notes confirm that this story is partly inspired by ArlyssTolero's Arrow: Rebirth and Forging a Better Future series.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Chapter 15 sees Oliver learn that Laurel is the Black Canary and her role in Malcolm's death; as well as Malcolm's role in the sinking of the Gambit and plans for the Undertaking (although she doesn't tell him about the time-travel angle).
  • From Laurel's perspective, she's surprised to learn that Oliver spent some of his five years away as a cage fighter in Russia.
• Irony:
  • After Team Arrow felt that she was too emotional to be a good vigilante in the original future, Laurel is put out when she overhears Ted and Isaac saying that she isn't emotional enough to be a vigilante in the past (they feel that she doesn't have the necessary drive to do what they do at this time).
  • Laurel explicitly notes the irony that she's telling Sara about time travel even if she doesn't explicitly tell Sara about the Legends.
  • Laurel turns Oliver down because she's convinced that Felicity is his One True Love. Oliver (rightly) takes her rejection to mean that she thinks he doesn't love her, and decides to prove himself to her. This leads to him dismissing going to Felicity for tech support out of hand, and instead chooses someone there will be no romantic suggestions with: Naomi Singh.
• Irrational Hatred: Suggested; Moira appears to have essentially taken on Malcolm's loathing for the Glades, "blaming" the citizens for the rise of the vigilantes rather than consider that there wouldn't be any such problems if people would do more to help the Glades improve.
• It's All About Me: When Felicity is fired for framing Naomi for corporate espionage, her defense focuses on how she was threatened and this could affect her life when Naomi did nothing to justify Felicity framing her and would have suffered the same fate.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Thea blames herself once Moira announces her refusal to follow up on the issues raised by the Restons' lawsuit, as the younger Queen recognizes that there are many people in the Restons' position who didn't turn to crime and feels it's unfair that they should all suffer because of the Restons' actions.
  • Likewise, Laurel blames herself both for how Thea's life has been in danger in unfamiliar circumstances and how some consequence of her changes led to Oliver recruiting Naomi rather than Felicity as his tech expert. Sara has to explicitly tell Laurel that people are going to make their own decisions in response to Laurel's actions and she can't keep trying to force a particular version of events on to them.
  • Laurel also blames herself for how badly her relationship with Oliver turned out in the previous timeline, unable to admit that it was partially (and probably mostly) his fault too.
• Jack of All Stats: Invoked; the Monitor explains that he chose Laurel because she represents traits that are personified in each of the six Paragons.
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Laurel breaks into Merlyn Global as a night cleaner. She bought a uniform a with prepaid gift card (purchased with cash), subdues the actual cleaning lady to get her access card, and goes the night of Merlyn's Christmas party to ensure he will be far away.
• Jerkass Realization: Sara reflects that she only really accepted that she was wrong to sleep with Oliver when Laurel made it clear that she forgave her for it. Sara reflects that if she'd come home on her own and been faced with an angry Laurel, she would have probably gone on the defensive and convinced herself that she was right to be with him, unwilling to face how she'd screwed up in the past. Which is a pretty good summary of how it went in the show.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: As well as Laurel's discomfort in lying about her time travel experience to so many people, at one point Oliver has to confront Walter about the Restons' court case to maintain the impression that the Hood has no connection to them.
• Killed Offscreen: Malcolm. He's last seen being taken away for questioning by Ra's, and the next mention of him is that his body has been found and Tommy identifying him in the morgue, meaning the League took the time to return his corpse to Starling.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Laurel, while no longer physically an alcoholic, still has the mentality of one, and unlike in the last timeline no one except her is aware of it. To prevent herself from relapsing, she immediately starts attending AA meetings — and brings Quentin with her, ostensibly for emotional support, but in reality in order to convince him to start treating his alcoholism as well.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Chapter 13 features the Hood having a brief confrontation with Batman, before Black Canary shows up to convince them both to stand down.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Both Laurel and Sara are this to Quentin, who is unable to function without both of them alive. Laurel knows that the only way for Quentin to really get better and start living his life again is to get Sara back from the League, and the readers are well aware of how badly Quentin can fall apart without Laurel to keep him together. Quentin himself notes that he's not whole with only one of his girls alive.
• Meaningful Name: When Naomi asks for input as to a code name for herself, Roy suggests "Firewall" and Naomi notes that she'll consider it. Later, Barbara refers to her as "Codec" which Naomi says she can work with that.
• Mental Time Travel: Much to Laurel's lament. While it does prevent anybody from questioning a sudden change in appearance, it also means Laurel needs to get her body back into shape in order to become a vigilante again.
• Metaphorically True: To justify her issues around Naomi, Laurel claims that she had a friend at law school who was good with computers and feels put off that Naomi is like that friend but isn't that friend.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Not outright stated, but Bruce Wayne appears to be thinking this when he realizes that Dick Grayson nearly killed himself to stop an arms shipment because he thought that was what Bruce would do, where Bruce never intended to make Dick feel as though he should go that far.
• Never My Fault: Felicity may be justified blaming Ted Daniels for forcing her to help him carry out industrial espionage on Queen Consolidated, but as Walter Steele points out, she could have confessed to what she had done herself rather than frame someone else for it. She even vows to expose the Hood as "a violent bully ruining the lives of innocent people" when she legitimately committed a crime and got caught.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In order to convince Thea to go clean, Laurel shows her picture to all her usual clubs and informs the bartenders that she's a minor so they won't serve her anything. This leads to Thea becoming so desperate for a fix that she tries to hit up a sleazy dealer located in the Glades, only to nearly get kidnapped by him. Thankfully, Laurel (in her vigilante identity) is nearby and manages to save her, and the whole experience causes Thea to finally take Laurel's words to heart and go clean.
  • Later on, as a result of Laurel trying to convince the Restons to pursue legal means of getting their money after their dismissal, Thea is briefly taken hostage, Kyle Reston is killed, and Moira simultaneously orders Laurel to stay away and refuses to give anyone compensation for the dismissal as she feels that she would just be encouraging criminal behavior. On a more minor note, Laurel forgiving Samantha basically leaves Samantha feeling as though she has "permission" to move on with her life and start dating again, giving her another reason to limit Oliver's contact with William.
  • Ted feels that this applies when he learns about the Tournament of Skulls, a fighting contest between various low-level criminals; since the vigilantes have been clearing the streets of most of the people who'd normally take part in such fights, the organizers are turning their attention to the clients of the Wildcat Gym.
  • Laurel will likely feel that this applies to her when she learns that Felicity has been fired from Queen Consolidated and joined her father as a criminal hacktivist rather than becoming Team Arrow's tech support.
• Nice to the Waiter: There's nothing to indicate Laurel was ever anything but polite and friendly to various service staff, but after going undercover as a night janitor she swears to generously tip "every hotel maid and busboy that she had to inconvenience ever again."
• Not So Similar: When Oliver uses his Bratva contacts to call off their forces in the mob war, Helena initially compares it to Nudocerdo's deal with the mob, but Batman affirms that there's a difference between Oliver making a deal to save lives and minimize casualties and Nudocerdo's deal to just keep those casualties limited to areas he doesn't care about.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When Floyd Lawton attacks the Unidac auction, Laurel takes Oliver's gear and leaves him a message stating that she'll deal with the mercenary. A news anchor later reports that Lawton was subdued by the Black Canary who left him to be apprehended by the police.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Samantha Clayton looks absolutely horrified and panicked when Laurel greets her. Laurel is actually a little amused by it.
  • Laurel gets one when she sees that the SWAT officer Oliver saved is Carrie Cutter. She has a further one when Tommy introduces Isabel Roschev as his girlfriend.
• Ominous Message from the Future: As part of his warnings about the Crisis, the Monitor instructs Laurel that she must seek out the Paragons necessary to save the world.
• Only in It for the Money: Naomi Singh isn't interested in simply enjoying Oliver's presence for eye candy, and won't help him simply because he asks, forcing Oliver to pay her for her work. The fact that she's an intern for Queen Consolidated and as such isn't being paid just adds to it. That said, when she's fired from Queen Consolidated and hired to officially manage the soup kitchen's online presence and unofficially act as the vigilantes' tech support, she makes it clear that she enjoys this job far more as she feels she is making a more genuine impact.
• Other Me Annoys Me: invokedWord of God states several times in the comment section that Sara and Oliver would be disgusted with how they treated Laurel in the previous timeline.
• Parents as People: Quentin clearly loves Laurel and wants the best for her, but thinks she's better off without him since he is staunchly refusing to move on from Sara's supposed death.
• Peggy Sue: One where it is Laurel Lance that is sent back in time to change things.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Laurel's subtle "rejection" inspires Oliver to adjust his planned cover persona once he returns home, such as setting up a soup kitchen rather than a nightclub as his cover as he wants to set up a place where Laurel will feel welcome and abandoning the idea of flirting with random women to show her that he can be committed, even if he still thinks he'll need to hide his activities as the Hood from her. This desire to be committed also leads to Oliver approaching someone else as a technical consultant, as he worries that Felicity would get the "wrong impression" from his interest, whereas his chosen "target" of Naomi Singh is a recent graduate around Thea's age who would be too young for him. This eventually leads to a series of events that culminates in Felicity joining her father as a fellow cyber-criminal after she's fired from QC for trying to frame Naomi for corporate espionage.
  • Stopping Malcolm Merlyn before Oliver even gets home has several ramifications:
    • Laurel is able to use this to get Ra's to release Sara from the League immediately. This puts Sara in a slightly better mental state, and it allows her to tell Moira Queen about the island. She dispatches Global Rescue and brings Oliver home earlier than in canon.
    • According to an Author's Note, Malcolm was killed before he went to Russia. This allowed Oliver to successfully kill Kovar in Russia, preventing the final showdown on Lian Yu and Oliver being injected with Red Death. As a result, Oliver's mental faculties after he returns home are overall clearer and less depressed since the drug never entered his system.
    • Malcolm's plans for the Undertaking never made it past the blueprints stage, so that has been averted entirely.
  • The Count and Sebastian Blood are both arrested before they can become major threats. Meanwhile, Garfield Lynns is successfully talked out of his planned murder spree by Laurel when she persuades him to try legal action instead of murder.
• Police Are Useless: Due to the aforementioned corruption, when the mob war breaks out, Quentin and a SWAT team focus entirely on apprehending Black Canary and completely ignore the mobsters shooting up the street.
• Pragmatic Hero: From Lance's perspective, this is what motivates his decision to focus on hunting Black Canary; while the Hood is a known killer, Black Canary is a less dangerous target and a more obvious source of potential intelligence given her connections to the other vigilantes.
• Precrime Arrest: Laurel initially uses this to deal with Malcolm, as she uses her knowledge from the future to steal his plans for the Undertaking and pass them on to the League. With Malcolm dealt with, Laurel turns her attention to other villains Oliver and the team dealt with earlier on, such as Garfield Lynns, aiming to arrest, kill or redeem them as appropriate.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Laurel finds herself speculating that this may basically happen to Ray Palmer, as her actions may prevent the events that led to the death of his fiancé and thus his decision to create the A.T.O.M. armor.
  • Any potential Felicity had of joining the main cast ends after she's fired from QC and runs off with her dad.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Ra's al Ghul of all people. He listens to everything Laurel has to say about Malcolm, acknowledges that the Queen's Gambit was clearly sabotaged, and is willing to send someone to get proof of what she says rather than dismiss it outright.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • When Laurel starts training with Ted and Isaac (before Isaac had his breakdown), Ted recognizes her fighting style as his own even though he knows he's never trained with her before, but Laurel claims that she is just a fan who's seen some of his matches.
  • Laurel relies on a variation of this when explaining how she found out about Malcolm's plans to Oliver; without revealing the time-travel angle, she just claims that she overheard Malcolm threatening Moira during a party, trusting that Oliver will be more shocked at the idea of Malcolm being the villain to question how Laurel came by that information in the first place.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Oliver correctly deduces that while Laurel still loves him, she believes that he does not love her, but incorrectly concludes that this is the result of his affair with Sara. In truth, the original timeline convinced Laurel that Felicity is Oliver's One True Love, helped no doubt by that Oliver's poor treatment of her.
  • Quentin decides that he needs to work on his drinking because he feels that Black Canary tracking him down to talk is a sign that he's getting sloppy and losing focus if he missed the signs that he was being "stalked" by a vigilante, rather than realize that Black Canary knows his habits for a more personal reason.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: In a loose sense; Oliver's first target as the Hood is Thomas Elliot, although there is no indication that Elliot is active as a villain at this point yet (in that he isn't going out in a costume to fight Batman, as he's obviously a corporate villain whom Oliver is justified in targeting).
• Rousseau Was Right: Laurel's strategy for Isaac is banking on the idea that he always regretted his initial murder, and that as such she will be able to reach him. She's right.
  • She also bets on this for Garfield Lynns, believing that she can get him to avoid murdering people by convincing him to instead help her file a lawsuit against those responsible for his injuries. She's right again, helped no doubt when he learns his team didn't abandon him like he thought.
• Saying Too Much:
  • When Laurel confronts Ra's al Ghul, she says enough to at least get Ra's thinking that she has some knowledge of the Anti-Monitor and the original purpose of the League.
  • Later, when Oliver returns and tries to tell Laurel he still loves her, he notes that even though she rejected him, she never said that she wasn't in love with him (while unaware that she's operating on the assumption that he's "destined" to be with Felicity).
  • When Laurel runs into Barry at Iron Heights, she calls him by name before remembering that she shouldn't know him yet; she has to improvise an explanation that she noticed his father's case while researching her current case for Peter Declan.
• Screw Destiny: Oliver essentially says this from Laurel's perspective; when she talks about losing touch with "a friend from college who was good with computers", Oliver suggests that if she can't get back in touch with that friend then it just wasn't meant to happen, unwittingly suggesting to Laurel that she should accept that he won't be with Felicity in this timeline.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Isaac decides to leave Starling City and set up "shop" in Hub City because he feels that he can't accomplish anything with Ted and Laurel trying to hold him back, and because he's also holding them back since they can't accomplish their own goals if they have to constantly watch out for him to make sure he doesn't go overboard.
• Secret-Keeper: Ra's al Ghul becomes the first person Laurel tells about her affiliation with Mar Novu. However, Laurel only later tells Sara that she's from the future, letting others assume she's "just" Mar Novu's chosen warrior.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Laurel of course knows that Oliver is the Hood, but he at first has no idea that she knows. In Chapter 13, Batman deduces this as well, something else that Oliver is unaware of until Chapter 15.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Felicity frames Naomi for the corporate espionage she herself committed under duress so she won't get fired. When Oliver (as the Hood) brings her actions to light, she gets fired anyway, with Walter even flat-out telling her she only has herself to blame for what happened.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Laurel's mission. Mar Novu himself tells Laurel that her death was never supposed to happen and was a direct result of the constant meddling with the timeline, and that is one of the main factors that caused Crisis to arrive five years early and succeed.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Laurel admits she loves Tommy, but not romantically, as much as she had tried to convince both him and herself of that during their relationship, and intends not to have a relationship with him and to let him down gently after she goes back in time. The ship sunk even further after Laurel turns in Malcolm to the League to be executed for his plans for the Undertaking, after which she begins actively distancing herself from him, acknowledging that their relationship can never be the same after what she did.
  • Whatever chances of Olicity happening go down drastically after Oliver (as the Hood/Green Arrow), busts Felicity for corporate espionage when she tries to frame Naomi for her crimes and gets the latter fired from her job at QC. When Felicity is recruited by her father not long after her termination, her thoughts make it clear that she now holds a grudge against the Hood, ensuring a lack of interest from both ends.
• Ship Tease: After Naomi becomes an official part of the team, she starts to more openly fantasize about the possibility of a relationship with Thea, particularly when she attends Thea's eighteenth birthday party.
• Shipper on Deck: Alfred Pennyworth briefly suggests that Laurel might be a good partner for Bruce due to their "common interest" as vigilantes, but Bruce quickly clarifies that Laurel's interests lie with the Hood first and foremost and Alfred accepts the situation.
• Shoot the Bullet: Batman saves Nightwing from blowing up a warehouse with himself in it by striking a lit match with a Batarang as Nightwing was throwing it.
• Shout-Out: Upon being told she's going to have a costume and choose a color for it, Helena sarcastically quips "What are we, the Power Rangers?"
• Shrine to Self: In Malcolm's secret room, Laurel notes that his Dark Archer outfit is set up like its a shrine. From the show, it did indeed look like a shrine.
• Smug Snake: Ted Daniels attempts to appear tough when confronted by Oliver, but he's swiftly taken down and gives in just by Oliver driving his heel into Daniels' hand.
• Spared by the Adaptation: As explained by invokedWord of God, in the original timeline, Dick Grayson sacrificed himself to destroy a guns shipment, which led to Barbara retiring as Oracle from grief and contributed to Batman's own decision to "retire".
• Special Person, Normal Name: Laurel runs into this problem when hunting for the Paragons she hasn't found yet, as "Clark Kent" and "John Jones" are far too common for her to be sure where to find the ones she's looking for (obviously finding Diana of Themyscira has its own set of problems).
• Spotting the Thread: Various parties have independently noticed clues that Laurel's actions aren't a "conventional" turn to vigilantism:
  • Ra's notes three things about Laurel that make him suspicious: her eyes are older than her face, her claim that she overheard Malcolm talking to Moira about the Undertaking is suspiciously careless of him, and her use of the word "crisis" makes him think of the Anti-Monitor.
  • Later on, Bruce and Oliver each privately observe anomalies on Laurel's actions as the Black Canary; Bruce notes that it doesn't make sense for Laurel to go from lawyer to vigilante so suddenly without a suitable catalyst, and Oliver wonders why Laurel singled Roy in particular out to join her in the field over so many other street punks.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Unsurprisingly, Batman. When he joins forces with the Starling vigilantes, he seems to deliberately wait for Rene to wonder when he'll arrive before Emerging from the Shadows and revealing He Was Right There All Along. That he did in their own base just makes it more blatant. He vanishes just as quickly and quietly.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Sara is released from the League and returns to Starling, and finds that her parents are divorced, her father is an alcoholic, and her sister is a vigilante. All this, coupled with being hounded by reporters and Laurel being trained by Nyssa (reminding her of the League) causes her to leave Starling. At least temporarily.
• Take That!:
  • Laurel is outraged by the misogynistic nature of her death, and Novu outright says it wasn't supposed to happen.
  • The fic takes a shot at Felicity referring to herself, Oliver, and Diggle as the "original" Team Arrow despite not actually joining until months after John did through Laurel assuming Felicity was already working with Oliver shortly after he returned to Starling, not knowing that in this timeline, Oliver avoided approaching Felicity as his tech support entirely.
• The Team Benefactor: Discussed and averted. Laurel comments to Nyssa that she and Ted don't have someone financing them, necessitating day jobs.
• Team Dad/Team Mom: Oliver and Laurel are basically acknowledged as this for the vigilantes, as Ted might be older but Oliver is the more dynamic figure and Laurel is the one who rallied them all to do more.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Felicity basically decides this when her father approaches her to offer her support after she's fired from Queen Consolidated, reasoning that trying to be a good person just got her fired (ignoring how she framed an innocent woman to protect herself and was fired after that was exposed).
• Theory Tunnel Vision: Laurel is so certain that Oliver and Felicity are meant to be together that she's both ignoring any evidence that Oliver still has feelings for her and spent several chapters privately assuming that Felicity's already working with Oliver "behind the scenes" before she meets Naomi directly.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Particularly applies to Thea; where it took her community service after her use of Vertigo to make her more aware of other peoples' problems in canon, here Thea shows more social awareness after being rescued by the Black Canary during one of her early nights out. By the Christmas after Oliver's return, Thea is asking to volunteer at Oliver's soup kitchen and regrets how her role in the Restons' arrest prevented other former employees receiving due compensation.
• Training from Hell: Laurel decides to get back into shape quickly by using the Smolov program, and spends much of it lamenting how awful it is.
• Triple Shifter: Laurel works at C.N.R.I., trains at Ted's gym, goes to A.A. meetings, and is a vigilante at night. More than one character asks when she sleeps. There's some indication that having died young in the previous timeline, she's now trying to live life to its fullest.
• Trophy Child: Helena explicitly reflects that her father treats her as more of a possession than a person.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: As part of his efforts to prove himself to Laurel, Oliver tries to ignore his initial attraction to Black Canary.
• Underestimating Badassery: Sara realizes that Laurel is the woman who came to the League and follows her and Nyssa back to Starling City, but underestimates what her sister is physically capable of (albeit for the understandable reason that she has no way of knowing what training Laurel has received since they last saw each other).
• The Unhug: Nyssa is said to go "stiff as a board" when Laurel hugs her. That she didn't object to or stop Laurel hugging her is still a good sign though.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: Vigilante anyway. After Laurel and Ted stop Roy from stealing a woman's purse, she manages to completely unnerve him by revealing she knows his full name and address.
• Villain with Good Publicity: As this is set prior to the Undertaking, Malcolm is still a respected figure. After the League kills him, Laurel bitterly muses that he'll be "immortalized as Starling’s humanitarian martyr", something she considers his last laugh on her.
• Wealthy Philanthropist: Oliver decides to go into philanthropy instead of starting a night club by opening a soup kitchen. Part of this is so he can prove himself to Laurel, but he later admits to her that once the idea entered his mind and he started seriously thinking about it, the more he came to like it. It becomes clear that Oliver genuinely enjoys this kind of work more than any other job he could have had, so Laurel comes to see it as a positive change, and the soup kitchen later becomes a frequent hangout spot for the vigilantes alongside the Wildcat Gym.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sara brings this up when she criticizes Laurel for essentially using her future knowledge to try and force others onto what she thinks is the right path for them, rather than accepting things as they are and recognizing that other people have the right to respond to her changes in their own way.
• The Worf Effect: Malcolm Merlyn's Undertaking is stopped before it can really start and he himself is killed by the League for planning it thanks to Laurel informing them.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • Laurel's strategy with Isaac basically relies on this assumption, hoping that he regretted his initial murder and just got caught up in his bitterness.
  • Laurel basically says this outright when she tells Sara about her status as a time traveler, assuring Sara "You are stronger than you think and kinder than you know".
  • After the battle against the mobs, Oliver basically gives this to Roy and Tommy, assuring Roy that being afraid in a fight like last night's one is nothing to be ashamed of and observing to Tommy that he at least was always honest about the kind of relationship he wanted with women where Oliver was known to cheat.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Novu tells Laurel that she needs to keep the League of Assassins intact in order to make sure Crisis doesn't come early, she's almost tempted to call him a liar because she can't conceive of any world where a cult of murderers is one of the things preventing the apocalypse. She only stops because she figures that the League may have strayed from their original purpose of stopping Crisis, and it's her duty to correct that.
• You Remind Me of X: When Laurel meets Bruce Wayne, she notices various details about him, ranging from how he observes his surroundings to how his private driver (Alfred) has followed him from Gotham, and privately compares all those little quirks to Oliver's past actions in the original timeline. From these assorted clues, it's relatively easy for Laurel to deduce that Bruce Wayne is Batman when she finds the Hood and Batman fighting near the warehouse where the Queen's Gambit is being kept.
• Young Face, Old Eyes: Due to Laurel's mind being sent back to her past self's body from five years ago, characters such as Quentin and Ra's al Ghul note there's something about Laurel's eyes that make her seem older.

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