Fanfic / moral of the story (Nyame)

moral of the story (FFN Link) is an Arrowverse fanfic by Nyame, the author of To Hell and Back (Arrowverse), one day at a time (Nyame), and The Hurricane. It is an Arrow Season Two canon divergent AU, stemming from the infamous hallway scene in the episode "Time of Death".

The premise is simple — instead of Oliver's words giving Laurel a wake up call, she instead interprets them in an entirely different way, driving her to deliberately fatally overdose herself on pills and alcohol later that night. A guilt-ridden Sara sells herself back to the League of Assassins in exchange for being allowed to use the Lazarus Pit to resurrect Laurel.

And so, Laurel begins a very different journey to becoming the Black Canary, and finds herself meeting Oliver again ten years later, both of them now very different people.

---

Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Quentin and Dinah are both this to Laurel, the former having drunkenly abused her for years and blamed her for Sara's death, and the latter having abandoned her and admitted to letting Sara betray her. This, combined by how they're all smiles and willing to put in the effort to reunite their family only when Sara comes back, just reinforces to Laurel how little they care about her. It's no wonder Laurel finally has enough and cuts them both out of her life after her resurrection.
• Advice Backfire: Diggle constantly advising Oliver to ignore Laurel and citing her as a distraction from the latter's mission to save the city is one of the driving factors that leads to Oliver's abusive outburst towards Laurel in the hallway, the situation that led to her suicide. Felicity calls him out on it while she's quitting the team, and later on Oliver, Laurel, and even Diggle himself openly acknowledge that it was terrible advice, mainly driven by Diggle's unwarranted grudge against Laurel for Oliver choosing to help her over him during the episode "Home Invasion". When Laurel briefly visits Starling for Moira's funeral, Diggle goes out of his way to apologize for it.
• All for Nothing: Oliver's actions not only render all the efforts to free Sara from the League and reunite the Lance family meaningless, but outright destroys their family all over again, this time for good. To emphasize that, each of the Lances are back to where they were before his return, except in an even worse state than they were before: Sara has returned to the League, now completely convinced she's a monster who belongs with them; Quentin is an even bigger drunk than he used to be and no longer has a job; Dinah has fled back to Central City, hating herself even more for her terrible parenting and having lost both Sara and Laurel; and Laurel has been completely jaded by everything and has left Starling altogether. Laurel compares the entire situation to the Gambit, and seeing the results, it's a rather apt parallel.
• All Take and No Give: With Laurel as the Giver and Oliver and her family as the Takers. Laurel is constantly expected to subordinate her feelings to everyone else's and support them through their troubles while dealing with her troubles on her own without their support. And when she tries to complain about this, they label her as selfish and tell her off. It takes her committing suicide for them to recognize and regret their bad treatment of her, but by that point, it's too late.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Part of the motivation for Laurel's outburst at the family dinner was a desperate desire to have at least one of the people present prove they still cared about her and her feelings. After her suicide, she finally gets her proof... in the form of her sister Sara trading herself back to the League of Assassins in exchange for being allowed to use the Lazarus Pit to bring Laurel Back from the Dead. Laurel does not take any of this well at all, and while she rightfully blames Oliver for what happened, a part of her can't help but blame herself as well.
  • Oliver's outburst towards Laurel in the hallway is made with the intentions of forcing a "wake up call" on her and convincing her to stop her self-destructive behavior. In a way it does do that, as Laurel's subsequent suicide and resurrection makes her realize that both Oliver and her parents are toxic presences in her life and if that she wants to heal and be happy, she needs to get away from them. To say Oliver regrets this is an immense understatement.
• Belated Love Epiphany: Oliver realizes he's still in love Laurel and that she is the love of his life... after he accidentally drove her to suicide. This is what prompts his My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • Laurel is devastated after being forced to watch Sara rejoin the League, losing her a second time. When Bruce reveals there's a way to free Sara, but that it involves killing a centuries-old near-immortal warrior without her Canary Cry, she makes it clear she doesn't care and asks him for training then and there.
  • Laurel also has this for Thea. She blasts Slade Wilson point-blank with a Canary Cry to protect Thea from him, and lets the younger woman move in with her in Gotham after Thea decides to put some distance between Oliver and herself. This is actually one of the reasons why Thea decides to go with her — even though they weren't related and lived thousands of miles apart, Laurel proved to be a far kinder and more supportive older sibling figure to Thea than Oliver was the past several months, so Thea naturally prefers her company over her brother's.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Oliver's reputation takes a massive hit in the wake of Laurel's temporary death, as everyone can't believe he'd do something so horrible. Several of his loved ones cut ties with him and his public reputation is completely shot, to almost unrecoverable levels.
  • A more concrete example is Roy's attitude towards Oliver, which notably cools after having to comfort Thea over Laurel's suicide. While he's still willing to learn under Oliver in order to control the Mirakuru, he no longer idolizes Oliver and it shows.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Laurel calls out Quentin on his inability to love his daughters equally after he decides the best way to make things up to Laurel is to make her his new favorite child and Sara the scapegoat. Naturally, that just pisses Laurel off, as Sara was the only person to sincerely show her remorse by giving up her freedom and rejoining the League to resurrect her sister after her suicide.
• Childhood Friends: Laurel and Barbara Gordon, who lived in Starling as a kid in this continuity before moving to Gotham with her father.
• Cool Big Sis: Laurel to Thea. Laurel privately admits that one of the reasons why she moved to Gotham is so that Thea could maintain relationships with both Laurel and Oliver without feeling caught up between the two of them and their issues with each other. Ultimately, after Oliver proves to be a Disappointing Older Sibling, Thea ditches him for Laurel completely, finding the latter to be a more considerate and supportive presence in her life.
• Curse Escape Clause: When discussing the side-effects of the Lazarus Pits such as the feral anger that can only be ended by killing a person's killer, Laurel and others privately speculate that Laurel likely never had to deal with this issue because she killed herself rather than being killed by someone else.
• Death-Activated Superpower: A variation. Laurel awakens the Canary Cry after her metagene is activated by the waters of the Lazarus Pit during her resurrection.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Atoner. The story displays that while there is nothing wrong with wanting to redeem and feel better about yourself, it shouldn't be your primary motivation for atonement, otherwise, it could quite easily morph into selfishness instead. Your primary motivation should always be the sake of someone else, usually the person/people you wronged. This is perfectly displayed with Oliver and Sara, who are attempting to redeem themselves by being "heroes"/vigilantes for the city while studiously ignoring their poor treatment of Laurel, the person they wronged most, under the mistaken belief that what they're doing in the shadows to help others who are not Laurel but they perceive to be suffering far worse than her and how they themselves suffered during their time away gives them a pass. This eventually causes Laurel to commit suicide after Oliver's abusive outburst in the hallway convinces her that they don't care about her, completely destroying any sense of atonement and redemption they once felt and instead reinforcing the idea that they are still the horrible, selfish people they were before the Gambit. If they had just owned up to how they wronged her and apologized for it, the entire situation could've been avoided.
• Deconstruction Fic: The story is a massive deconstruction of Oliver's abysmal treatment of Laurel Season Two and beyond, including his tendency to completely dismiss her problems as insignificant since her trauma over the past several years doesn't compare to what he went through and subordinate her feelings below his own. It shows that this is not Oliver standing up for himself, as canon tried to portray it as, but rather another example of him being a self-centered jerk who is actively using his trauma and status as a vigilante/"hero" to excuse abusing and neglecting his loved ones. Once Laurel and everyone else realize this, they begin distancing themselves from him. Laurel herself notes that the island hasn't really changed Oliver as much as he likes to think it has, stating that he is "as selfish as [he's] ever been". This is only reinforced by his treatment of Thea after Laurel leaves Starling, as he does everything he can to hide his vigilante secret from his sister even in the face of Slade's threat to her life, up to and including trying to force Roy into breaking up with her, just so she won't shun him for it or for his time on Lian Yu. By the time Thea finds out about his secret, she no longer cares about it, as everything he's done to hide it has given her enough reason to hate him on its own.
• Didn't Think This Through: Oliver really should have known better than to be so cruel to a depressed alcoholic who had gone through multiple traumatic experiences and had just lost one of her best friends/ex-boyfriend, her job and her reputation, which is repeatedly lampshaded by everyone.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Oliver notes that if he admits to Thea that he ignored Laurel's accusations about Blood because he couldn't trust her word thanks to her addiction issues, the same issues he ended up driving Laurel to suicide over weeks later, he'd be doing this. Especially since it turns out Laurel was right and he was wrong, and his mistake indirectly helped cost their mother her life.
• Disappointed in You: Moira makes it blatantly clear how disappointed she is in Oliver and his callous behavior. She does more to make Oliver feel guilty for what he's done than anyone else does, at least up until he finally see Laurel's corpse.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: The story also deconstructs Oliver's treatment of Thea in the latter half of Season Two, pointing out that Oliver's actions during that season made him into an absolutely terrible brother for her. Between accidentally driving Laurel to suicide and causing Sara to sell herself back to the League just to bring Laurel Back from the Dead, keeping the danger Slade posed to them all secret from Moira and her (which led to Slade blindsiding them and killing Moira), and blackmailing her boyfriend into lying to her using his condition as an unwilling super soldier, at one point even trying to force Roy to break up with her, Thea understandably has an extremely low opinion of Oliver. When she learns that he ignored Laurel's suspicions about Blood because of the latter's addiction issues (the same issues that he would accidentally drive Laurel to suicide over weeks later), another thing that indirectly contributed to Moira's death, Thea has enough and can't stand to be around Oliver anymore if he's going to act like this, so she goes to Gotham to join Laurel instead.
• Double Standard: Lampshaded by Laurel. When others in her life struggle and need help, she's required to be their confidant and help them through their problems. But when it's her turn to struggle and need help, they disparage and ignore her, telling her to deal with her problems on her own, and labeling her selfish and entitled when she gets angry. It isn't until after her resurrection that Laurel realizes how messed up this is.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: According to the League's code, the results of duels are only recognized if they are fought fairly and neither combatants use physical enhancements (i.e. superpowers). This is the only thing stopping Laurel from going directly to Nanda Parbat and blasting Ra's al Ghul with her Canary Cry to free Sara, forcing her to undergo intense martial arts training instead.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • Essentially the divergence point of the story. Oliver intended his words to Laurel in the hallway to be a wake up call that forced her to confront how she was making a lot of bad choices and needed to take responsibility for them instead of blaming others. Unfortunately, he said those words in such a hostile and abusive manner that Laurel interpreted them in an entirely different way than he intended, causing the situation to end in tragedy instead.
  • Oliver himself also a victim of this, as he interpreted Laurel's outburst as an act of spite rather than what it really was: a desperate cry for help and a desire for proof that her family actually cared about her. It didn't help that he lacked context about the situation, namely the abuse Laurel's parents had been putting her through the past five years over Sara's death. When he finally gets all the information, he openly acknowledges that he should have never tried to force Laurel to reconcile with her family and that he would've handled Laurel's reunion with Sara very differently had he known.
  • As an attempt to reconcile with Laurel after her resurrection, a drunk Quentin tries to make Laurel his new favorite child and begins disparaging Sara instead. He fails to realize that this isn't what Laurel wanted at all; she just wanted her family, including Sara, to show that they cared about her too and to have her parents treat both of their daughters equally. Therefore, his actions have the exact opposite effect in that it just ends up driving Laurel further away from him.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Laurel had a tendency to do this with Oliver, constantly forgiving him during all the missteps in their relationship since she loved him that much. That turns out to be a mistake, as it just made him take her forgiveness for granted and begin to treat her abusively instead. It's for this reason that Laurel refuses to forgive him again after she's resurrected — he's already had plenty enough chances to do better, many of which he shouldn't have had in the first place, and she can no longer trust him with another one.
  • Brutally subverted after Laurel's resurrection with her family. Despite the regret her parents and sister show for the poor handling of Sara's return and their disregard for Laurel's feelings, Laurel only forgives Sara, since her decision to rejoin the League to revive Laurel displayed her genuine remorse. The same cannot be the said for their parents, especially Quentin, who failed to learn anything at all from the incident.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even Isabel Rochev is audibly disgusted with Oliver's actions.
• Everyone Has Standards: As furious as she is with Oliver right now, Laurel feels no vindication over being proven right about Sebastian Blood, as she knows Oliver will be feeling plenty enough guilt over it considering his refusal to believe her in part led to his mother's death. She even tries to get Thea to give him some slack on the matter, pointing out that Thea can't be any angrier at him than Oliver himself is.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: While what Oliver and Sara went through during the years they were gone was horrible, the story makes it painfully clear that Laurel is under no obligation to forgive them after they betrayed and hurt her so terribly. Their attempts to make her think otherwise (when one of them can't even give her the apology they know she deserves) instead convince her that they don't care about her or her feelings, which combined with all her other recent difficulties leads her to be Driven to Suicide. That effectively evaporates any sympathy everyone else has for Oliver and Sara's trauma, and when Laurel is resurrected, everyone is sure not to repeat the same mistake by trying to force her into forgiving them for that as well. Ultimately, Laurel only forgives Sara; she cannot forgive Oliver, since he's proven to have taken her forgiveness completely for granted.
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: Laurel's suicide note proves to be a pivotal part of the story, as some paparazzi get their hands on it and publish it in the tabloids, completely destroying Oliver's reputation. A brief excerpt of it is shown, detailing how Oliver's words helped convince Laurel suicide was a good idea.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • Horrible trauma does not mean you are granted the right to judge and demean other people for their own troubles just because you think they had it "easier" than you did. If you aren't willing to show other people empathy for their issues, then they will gradually lose any empathy they had for yours.
  • No amount of trauma excuses your previous mistakes, especially when those mistakes involve hurting someone you care about. On top of Oliver using his own trauma to excuse abusing and neglecting Laurel and Thea, Sara tries to get out of apologizing to Laurel for betraying her by going on the Gambit with Oliver under the belief that everything she endured on the Amazo and with the League washes away her guilt. While under normal circumstances Laurel might be willing to let it slide for that very reason, her current depressed state means she needs the apology as proof that Sara cares about her. Sara withholding it is therefore proof to Laurel she doesn't care about her, and ends up one of the main factors in her suicide. This convinces the now guilt-ridden Sara she genuinely is a monster if she couldn't even scrounge up enough decency to give an apology to her own sister for betraying her, and she ends up rejoining the League to both give Laurel a second chance at life and to punish herself.
  • No matter how much you love someone, there's only so much you can forgive them for before you have to acknowledge they are a toxic presence in your life and have to cut them out for your own good. Laurel considers Oliver to be her One True Love, which is why she's forgiven him for all the times he's hurt her. But when his abusive behavior eventually causes her to commit suicide and forces Sara back into the League to bring her back to life, Laurel is forced to acknowledge that he's never going to be as supportive and forgiving to her as she has been to him, and that she needs to get away from him for good if she's going to find any real happiness in her life again.
• Hated by All: Oliver becomes the most hated man in Starling City after some tabloids get a hold of Laurel's suicide note and publish it, revealing he is the one who gave her the final push to go through with it. Not even his friends and family are willing give him any leeway after that, with several of them making it blatantly clear how much they disapprove of his actions.
• History Repeats: Once again Oliver selfishly disregards and subordinates Laurel's feelings beneath his, and instead causes a line of Disaster Dominoes that accidentally ends up destroying her family. Laurel even lampshades this, flat-out stating that the entire situation is basically the Gambit all over again. The only real difference is that nobody has any sympathy for Oliver whatsoever despite the guilt he feels, since this time it's without a doubt his fault.
• Humble Pie: Laurel's suicide and its aftermath proves to be this for Oliver, as it reinforces that becoming a hero and redeeming himself takes a lot more work than just giving up killing like he assumed. And because of his actions, he has made the road to redemption much, much harder than it had to be.
• I Am a Monster:
  • After selling herself back to the League to bring Laurel Back from the Dead, Sara declares she is this to Team Arrow (Oliver, John, and Roy), believing her part in Laurel's suicide proves what a terrible person she is and that she belongs with all the other monsters in the League.
  • This is clearly how Oliver feels about himself after Roy leaves, have driven away just about every other person he still cares about as a result of his poor treatment of them leading to their lives being ruined. He hates himself so much, he tries to force Diggle, one of the few people willing to stick by him, to leave him too under the belief he'll just end up ruining the latter's life as well.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • While the circumstances are entirely different and happen several months earlier, Sara still ends up rejoining the League.
  • Moira Queen still dies.
  • Thea still leaves Starling after her mother's funeral. The only difference is that she goes with Laurel to Gotham instead of Malcolm to Corto Maltese, and that Roy later joins her there.
• I Owe You My Life: To be more specific, "I Owe You My Son's Life". Bruce offers to train Laurel and help her save her sister after she saves Jason's life.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Oliver is left emotionally shattered after realizing just how much he screwed up everyone's lives, and even more so when it becomes clear there is nothing he can do to make up for it.
  • While still angry at Oliver, Sara also blames herself for what happened, thoroughly convinced her return was the cause of Laurel's suicide and that she should have never come back.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A massive deconstruction. Having good intentions and secretly caring about someone is absolutely no justification for being a jerk to them, as Oliver brutally learns in this story. Especially when you don't bother to tell them about what you're doing or that you care about them. The reality is that, if you're going to act like a jerk, nobody is going to want to be around you.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • After she leaves Starling and has time to heal from her trauma and reflect on her past choices, Laurel acknowledges that her behavior in the months prior to her suicide was terrible. That being said, she also acknowledges it was still no excuse for what happened at the dinner.
  • Oliver has a major one after Laurel's temporary death, as the entire situation forces him to confront how his terrible treatment of Laurel is hurting her, and that ultimately, he's still the selfish jerk he was before the Gambit. Unfortunately for him, his attempts to make amends are rebuffed due to the damage its caused to the lives of Laurel and her family, leaving him completely unable to make up for any of it. All he can do is reform his behavior in hopes of not causing anymore pain to everyone else.
  • Sara has one as well, as she's forced to recognize that her attempts to downplay her betrayal and refusal to give the apology she knew Laurel deserved is why her sister ended up killing herself. Unlike Oliver, she is able to make up for it by resurrecting Laurel in exchange for Sara's freedom, and before she rejoins the League and leaves Laurel she makes it a point to sincerely apologize to her sister first.
  • Subverted with Quentin. Instead of reforming his behavior like Oliver and Sara do, he just switches his favoritism to Laurel and makes Sara The Unfavorite. Understandably, that just makes Laurel want nothing to do with him.
• Karmic Jackpot: Laurel saves an injured Robin while out on a snack run using her Canary Cry, and then brings him back to her apartment to nurse him to health. This leads to her meeting and befriending the Bat-Family (among which included her recently-reconnected Childhood Friend Barbara Gordon), who offer to train her so she can save her sister Sara from the League of Assassins.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Raisa basically makes herself this for Oliver after everyone else in his life has left when he asks Diggle to leave him as well. Since Oliver can't fire Raisa without depriving her family of needed income, he has to accept her staying with him even when he feels he doesn't deserve such support, allowing Raisa to encourage him to recognize his flaws and work on fixing them.
• Love Hurts: The only reason Oliver's words are able to affect Laurel so much is because she is still in love with him, so if he is finding fault in her, then that means there has to be something wrong with her. The reality is just because she loves him so much does not mean he's above being a jerk who takes her for granted, as she comes to realize after her resurrection.
• Love Martyr: Laurel proves to be one for both Oliver and her family, trying to constantly excuse their bad treatment of her with the belief that there is something sincerely wrong with her. After this behavior drives her to suicide and causes Sara to rejoin the League just so she can bring Laurel back, Laurel finally finds it in herself to stop being this by throwing both Oliver and her parents out of her life permanently.
• Mentor Archetype: Bruce becomes this to Laurel, Roy, and to a lesser extent Thea, teaching the former everything he knows about combat so she can save her sister and help mentoring the latter into becoming a vigilante.
• Mugging the Monster: When Laurel briefly returns to Starling to attend Moira's funeral, Slade tries to kidnap her, completely unaware of the existence of her Canary Cry. This proves to be a fatal mistake, quite literally.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Oliver's Delayed Reaction to Laurel's death. It doesn't really register for him until he sees her dead body for himself, at which point the guilt hits him like a freight train.
• Neutrality Backlash: Felicity considers her decision to stay neutral in the "Laurel debate" as this, as she feels her refusal to chime in and reveal how uncomfortable she was about the way Oliver and John were talking about Laurel helped enable the sequence of events that caused the latter's suicide. She decides to remedy this by telling her former friends exactly how she felt about their discussions about Laurel before leaving the team permanently.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Oliver accidentally driving Laurel to suicide becomes this practically overnight. As he sadly notes, as far as Starling is concerned he's always going to be "that dickhead playboy who drove his ex-girlfriend to suicide".
• Parental Favoritism: Both Quentin and Dinah heavily favor Sara over Laurel, to the point of using Sara's fate to actively abuse and neglect her. After the poor handling of Sara's return helps drive Laurel to suicide, a drunken Quentin guiltily switches his favoritism to Laurel and begins disparaging Sara instead. That does absolutely nothing to improve their relationship as Laurel still loves Sara, and she instead takes it as a sign that she needs to cut ties with him.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Subverted. Oliver is about to beg Laurel not to leave him after she declares she no longer wants him to be a part of her life, but Roy stops him from following her, acknowledging that Oliver has no right to ask her to stay after what he'd just done to her and her family.
• Point of Divergence: Laurel's suicide and subsequent resurrection changes the events of the rest of the second season greatly:
  • Felicity ends up quitting the team permanently and leaving Starling out of disgust for what Oliver did to Laurel, killing OTA and any chances of a relationship between Oliver and her.
  • Roy and Thea never break up, as Oliver's Broken Pedestal status means Roy is much more willing to argue with him, especially in regards to his romantic life. As a result, he was able to get a bit more leeway with telling Thea what he was up to, including learning under the Arrow and having the Mirakuru injected into him. He also refused to comply with Oliver's order to break up with Thea, allowing him to remain as her emotional support.
  • The Siege of Starling City never happens, as Laurel ends up killing Slade with her Canary Cry before Slade can go through with his plans. This subsequently spares Isabel Rochev and Sebastian Blood, who are merely arrested after evidence of their association with Slade and his terrorist plot come to light.
  • Isabel's early arrest also means Oliver is able to regain Queen Consolidated as the majority shareholder, allowing Oliver and Thea to remain billionaires.
  • Thea leaves Starling City with Laurel instead of Malcolm, as she's overall in a less emotionally vulnerable place and has somewhere and someone else to get away with. Roy later joins her after he's cured of the Mirakuru, being much less attached to the idea of being a vigilante with Oliver, even if he hasn't given up the idea of being a vigilante in itself.
• Poor Communication Kills: This is the crux behind Oliver and Laurel's confrontation in the hallway. Because Oliver hasn't been making an effort to be a good friend to Laurel and be a confidant for her like she has been for him in the past, he is completely unaware of the various issues she has with her family or everything she's currently dealing with, causing him to interpret her outburst at the dinner as her acting self-centered and entitled. His "wake-up call", as a result, instead of invigorating Laurel to reevaluate herself and make better choices, instead causes her to believe that everything wrong in her life, including Tommy's death and his and her family's poor treatment of her, is her own fault and that she needs to remove herself from their lives in order for them to be happy. What follows is an unmitigated disaster that sees Sara back in the League, Quentin Off the Wagon, Dinah fleeing back to Central City in shame, Oliver's civilian reputation in tatters and the man himself a guilt-ridden wreck, and a bitter and resentful Laurel washing her hands of all of them and leaving Starling City for good.
• Prelude to Suicide: The first scene shows the aftermath of Oliver and Laurel's confrontation in the hallway, Laurel's decision to kill herself, and her typing out her suicide note explaining her actions. It ends with her grabbing a bottle of pills, preparing herself to do the deed.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Oliver receives three very well-deserved ones in the wake of Laurel's temporary death, and one from Laurel herself after she's resurrected and opts to cut him from her life permanently.
  • Sara's is arguably the most vicious, as it also doubles as a break-up speech.
    Sara: This? This thing between us? It was a mistake. The worst mistake of my life. How I ever thought dating an asshole like you was worth throwing away my relationship with my sister is beyond me.
    Oliver: Sara—
    Sara: Don't you dare 'Sara' me! I don't care about what you meant, Ollie! Because you couldn't help yourself from being a selfish jerk at the wrong moment, my sister is dead! The same sister who called you 'the love of her life', and God knows why considering all you've put her through over the years! There's nothing you can do to fix this, make up for it! Nothing!
  • Moira is the most calm but also the most cutting, as she makes no bones about how disappointed she is in Oliver.
    Moira: I can see why you were frustrated with how the dinner went, but didn't you consider the reason why it went so badly is because you were attending it?
    Oliver: I was there for Sara—
    Moira: And you should have refused her offer. I feel for Sara, I truly do, but you should not have come. You are the reason why their family fell apart in the first place. Sara believed she loved you and you used that to blow up your relationship with Laurel because you were too much of a coward to tell her you were not ready to move in with her yet. Even without the Gambit sinking and causing the both of you to go missing for years, those actions would have destroyed their family. Fast forward a few years later, and you attend their first family dinner since Sara's return, and openly flaunt your new relationship in front of Laurel. Laurel, who loved you so much that she was willing to forgive you for what happened to Sara in the first place and give you another chance, only for you to abandon her right after. Who has been dealing with the guilt she felt over Tommy's death, being forced to prosecute me for my trial, and the recent loss of her job. And when she rightfully got angry at both of you for reminding her of your betrayal, you completely disregarded her feelings, telling her she was the person to blame for all the problems in her life, including the fact that you apparently did not love her anymore and were with Sara now, and that she needed to take responsibility for that.
    [Oliver looks down, ashamed]
    Moira: [sighs] I love you, Oliver. I will always love you. You're my baby boy, and there is nothing in the world that you could do to change that. But right here, right now, I have never been more disappointed in you in my entire life.
  • Felicity's doubles as one for both Oliver and John.
    "Look, I kept out of the whole Laurel debate because I didn't want to cause a fight between you two. I didn't want to take a side. But now I see that was a mistake. So let me be honest now: the way you talked about her, it was like she was some kind of needy pet that you were debating whether or not was worth keeping around. Newsflash: she wasn't! She was a human being who desperately needed support, support you couldn't give her because you were too obsessed with this oblique idea of 'saving the city' that you don't even have a vision for anymore!"
  • Laurel's is the last, most meaningful one, and serves to be what finally drives the severity of Oliver's actions home.
    Oliver: We'll need to figure out a cover story. I have some contacts with the government. With their help, I can—
    Laurel: [abruptly] Stop.
    Oliver: [wilts] Laurel?
    Laurel: [beginning to cry] Please, just stop. I can't do this. Not again.
    Oliver: What do you mean?
    Laurel: I mean this, Ollie! This whole song and dance! Like always, you fucked up and want forgiveness and you're willing to do anything for me now to have it, but I can't give it to you. Not for this.
    Oliver: Laurel—
    Laurel: You drove me to suicide, Ollie. You drove me to suicide, and then you let my sister sell herself back to the cult she was doing everything in her power to get away from just to bring me back. That... [closes her eyes, takes a deep breath] I have forgiven you for so much. All the times you cheated on me. All the times you lied to me. Cheating on me with Sara, taking her on the Gambit and for years letting us believe you got her killed. Abandoning me in the wake of Tommy's death. Leaving me to flounder alone while I turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with everything I'd lost. I forgave you because I loved you and honestly thought you had learned from all of that. That you were better than you were before. That the fault lied with me.
    But now it's clear that you haven't changed at all. You're as selfish as you've ever been. No matter how much you might claim to love me, the very moment I make mistakes or struggle, you demonize me and cast me aside for someone else. You aren't willing to afford me the same grace I've afforded you for all these years, and it's obvious you never will. And I can't take that anymore, not after everything it's cost me. Me, and my family.
    So this is me saying enough is enough. Stay away from me. I never want to see or speak to you ever again.
• Rejected Apology: After being resurrected, Laurel rejects Oliver's attempts to make amends, as he not only caused her to commit suicide, but also caused her to lose her sister again. Instead, she opts to throw him out of her life permanently and leave Starling altogether to start afresh in Gotham.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Laurel leaves Starling City and moves to Gotham, no longer able to stand living in her hometown after everything that happened and finding there's nothing really left for her in the city now that she's cut ties with both Oliver and her parents for good.
  • After learning about the circumstances surrounding Laurel's suicide, Felicity quits both Team Arrow and Queen Consolidated, no longer wanting to work with Oliver in any capacity.
  • Thea also leaves Starling after her mother's funeral, not wanting to be around Oliver for the time being after his behavior for the last few months. She heads to Gotham instead, finding Laurel's presence more supportive and comforting. Roy, after some thought, decides to follow her, finding that he loves Thea more than the idea of learning to be a vigilante under Oliver.
• Secretly Selfish: A talk with Raisa forces Oliver to acknowledge that he's this. Somewhere down the line, he made reconciling with Laurel after the Gambit less about making amends with her and helping her through her pain and more about redeeming himself and making himself feel better about how he wronged her. Likewise, his crusade as the Arrow has become less about helping the city and more about making himself into a hero everyone will admire. That's the real reason he lashed out at Laurel — her depressed and belligerent state made it clear that despite all his efforts, he was still failing at his goals, and with him not knowing what was bothering her, his frustration boiled over and he ended up blaming her for it instead.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Oliver continually lies to, neglects, and in some cases even outright abuses his loved ones in order to keep his vigilante secret, under the excuse of keeping them "safe", with the actual reason being that he doesn't want to face their possible scorn or judgement over it. By the time any of them actually find out, none of them care because everything he's done to hide it has given them more than enough reason to hate him on its own.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Both Oliver/Sara and Oliver/Felicity end immediately after both respective love interests learn Oliver drove Laurel to suicide, finding his poor treatment of her to be beyond the pale, and intuiting that he would treat them just the same if they started struggling like Laurel did. Sara goes as far as to state that pursuing Oliver was the absolute worst mistake of her life before dumping him outright.
  • Oddly, despite Laurel cutting Oliver out of her life in the first chapter, those actions are not this for Oliver/Laurel, as that is the main pairing of the story.
• Starting a New Life: After being resurrected and cutting ties with everyone who played a part in driving her to kill herself, Laurel leaves Starling City to start a new life in Gotham City. This ultimately proves to be the right choice, as no longer having to live with everyone else's expectations on her shoulders allows Laurel to finally have some breathing room and recover from her emotional trauma. Aside from some residual bitterness, she's overall much happier.
• Starts with a Suicide: Namely, Laurel's suicide. It succeeds, but thanks to the Lazarus Pit, her death isn't permanent.
• Suicide for Others' Happiness: Oliver's words convince Laurel that she's a bane on the lives of her loved ones and that this is the only way they'll be happy. Needless to say, this is far from the case.
• Tabloid Melodrama: A rare serious example and a key factor in the story. Some paparazzi manage to get a hand on Laurel's suicide note and publish it, exposing the fact that Oliver was the one to push her into doing it. This not only ruins Oliver's reputation with the public but also with his loved ones, who are furious at him for what his actions caused.
• Take Back Your Gift: Aside from a few photos involving their childhood and pictures of Thea, Laurel packs up everything Oliver had given her over the course of their relationship, including the "Dear John" Letter he left her and the small photo of herself she gave him right before the Gambit, and hands it off to John to give it all back to Oliver right before she leaves for Gotham. The sole exception is the jewelry he gave her, which she sells instead for some extra cash to help fund the move. This is to enforce to Oliver that there really is nothing he can do to make things up to her, and that she really does want him out of her life.
• Take This Job and Shove It:
  • Felicity quits both Queen Consolidated and Team Arrow and leaves Starling after Oliver's mistreatment of Laurel and how it led the latter to suicide comes to light, now viewing her former friend as a misogynistic jerk. When John tries to convince her not to go, she blows off all his attempts and delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to both Oliver and him before leaving, not even bothering with a goodbye.
  • In Laurel's suicide note, she admits she actually hated her job at the DA's office because of the rampant corruption there, including details of how solid cases were thrown out to serve corporate interests. As the note was published in several tabloids, this causes massive public backlash against the local government and causes an investigation to be opened into DA Kate Spencer and those working under her, including ADA Adam Donner. Naturally, when Laurel returns to Starling miraculously alive, they immediately drop the previous disciplinary hearing they had issued against her and offer her job back, complete with a promotion and a raise in a blatant Publicity Stunt. Laurel, understandably, throws the offer back in their faces.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. After her heart-to-heart with Oliver, Raisa insists he get therapy. The author even notes that Oliver's issues aren't because of anything inherently wrong with him, but because he has internalized a lot of toxic ideas and behaviors, the kind of things that therapy is supposed to help people overcome.
• Think Nothing of It: Laurel is quite willing to do anything for Bruce in exchange for the training she needs in order to save Sara, only for Bruce to easily agree since she saved Jason's life. She immediately backtracks and tells Bruce not to do it for that reason, not wanting to be rewarded for something she feels any decent person would've done.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Oliver's outburst towards Laurel in the hallway ends up causing a line of Disaster Dominoes that ends up destroying the personal lives of both himself and his loved ones, including her and her family. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's unquestionably his fault and everyone else has no issues raking him over the coals for it.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Thea, who is already angry at Oliver over the Laurel situation, rips her brother to pieces after she learns that he tried to force her boyfriend to break up with her just because he didn't want to tell her he was the Arrow. It's one of the things that drives her to leave Starling and join Laurel in Gotham.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Even after Oliver's mistakes basically destroy his life, Raisa is still willing to give him one of these, helping him recognize that the fact that he didn't want to have done so much damage to the people in his life shows that he at least wants to be better even if he's not sure how to go about it.
• You Should Have Died Instead:
  • Thea implies this with Oliver in the wake of Laurel's suicide.
    "I wish you'd never come back from that island! We were all better off thinking you were dead!"
  • Quentin used to introduce Laurel as "the daughter that lived" and outright blamed her for Sara's "death". When Laurel meets him again after her resurrection and he turns things around by claiming things were better when Sara was dead and that he was glad she was back in the League, Laurel is not impressed in the least and tells him off for being unable to love both his daughters equally.
  • Sara implicitly invokes this on herself, when saying her goodbyes to Laurel and telling her sister to forget about her.
    Sara: I'm sorry, Laurel. For everything. [turns to leave] Go and live your life. Be happy. Forget about me. Just… just pretend I died on that boat, like I should've six years ago.

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