Thea is thirteen when she loses two of the most important people in her life. Her brother and her father, lost to the sea somewhere by China. She cries and cries and refuses to leave her room. Nobody gets past the door, nobody besides Laurel Lance-Queen of course. Her pseudo-sister finds herself spending most nights curled up with the younger Queen, crying together.
Grief overwhelms them. They stand together at the double-funeral, draped in shades of black and Thea ignores the pitying looks sent their way by strangers and she tries her very best to ignore the flash of paparazzi taking pictures and invading her family's privacy at a funeral no less. Gritting her teeth, she keeps from screaming at them to leave and stop disrespecting her family. In the end it is Laurel who cracks, and she chews them all out. Something about the way Laurel stood up and pushed them back made them all disperse, running for the hills.
Instead of falling to drugs and alcohol, this Thea pushes herself to excel in school, pushes herself to be the woman Laurel and her mother both believed she could be. After all, if Laurel and Moira could survive this, then so too could she.
When Laurel came back school with a law degree she followed her and began an internship under her at CNRI in the Glades. After working there, she realized that this wouldn't be the path for her like it was for Laurel.
She turned eighteen and saw an opportunity to open a club in the Glades. Create a base for herself and Laurel to work out of under the guise of being nothing more than a nightclub. She is eighteen when she debuts as Speedy, after having trained with Laurel for two years. The Black Canary is strong and fearless, and she instills those same traits in her protégé. Speedy has always been a good shot, always had good aim, and she rarely misses with her trusty bow.
She was eighteen when she met Roy Harper. Roy Harper who had fought for everything he had in this world, Roy Harper who wanted to do some good in the city, Roy Harper who was looking for a job. Immediately she was drawn to him, she saw how deeply he cared about people, about the city, even when he felt like it threw him to the side, left him in the gutter. He saw how the system disadvantaged people because of the way it disadvantaged him, and he fought to right the wrongs, he fought to straighten it out so that no one else should have to suffer the way he did.
She is eighteen when they find her brother on Lian Yu. She is eighteen when they bring her brother into the fold, when they introduce the Green Arrow to Starling City. She is nineteen when they bring in Roy Harper to begin training and they are twenty when Arsenal goes on his first patrol with her.
Three years pass before Slade Wilson lays siege to their beloved city, before he tears down buildings and unleashes mirakuru powered maniacs on the streets. She is twenty-one when she loses her brother for the second time, only this time there's no coming back from it.
She's twenty-one when she learns she's going to be an aunt and she takes to her new role immediately. Her nephew is turning one and she's struck by how time flew by. She's twenty-two and finally marrying Roy, she hyphenates and becomes Thea Queen-Harper because of course she does. Then Connor's growing up and she makes sure she's the cool aunt, because what other kind could Thea Queen be? She teaches him all her favorite trick-shots when he's old enough and Roy laughs at her enthusiasm for training her nephew, he finds it endearing.
She makes sure he knows all about his father, her brother, Oliver Queen. She makes sure he knows his father was a hero, The Green Arrow.
She remembers her brother, his sacrifice and everything he did to survive and protect them, and she knows she can do the same. So, she fights and trains and always asks herself what Oliver and Laurel would do, because if she doesn't she fears she won't be the hero he was, or the woman Laurel had helped her become.
She would become a protector and a vigilante and a hero and an aunt and everything she was ever meant to be, and she would be happy.