A Dangerous Love: Athena and Prometheus (An Arrow: Season 5 Fanfiction)

Chapter 15: The Agony of Long-Kept Secrets

Adrian sat against the wall as Oliver laid on the floor, on his back, defeated after his admission. 

'How does it feel knowing that I saw the one thing you couldn't admit to yourself?' Evelyn Sharp got up from the ground and stood, crossing her arms. 

'I knew he'd break,' she remarked. 'Just like you said he would.' 

'It's because I know him better than he even knows himself. Give us a moment alone, will you?' She nodded and stepped out, closing the door behind her. 'I told you, Oliver. You infect every life you touch. And now do you realise why? It's because your crusade was based on a lie. You used your father's memory to justify a killing spree. There's a price to be a paid for that, Oliver. Your mother paid it. Your friend Tommy paid it, Laurel. Do you really want to tell me that John Diggle and Felicity Smoak's lives are better having known you?' 

'You promised to let me go,' Oliver replied brokenly. 

'And I'm a man of my word. But first, I have a gift for you,' Adrian replied, picking up a small blowtorch and walking over to him. 'This tattoo of yours. To be an American and named a captain in the Bratva, you must have done something extraordinary. When you look at it, it must - it must remind you of such a victory.' He knelt down next to him. 'Now when you look at it, you'll think about our time here together and the secret that you confessed to me.' 

'Whatever pain I caused you, I'm sorry.' 

'I believe you, Oliver. I just don't care.' And then, he leaned over and lit the blowtorch, beginning to burn the star-shaped tattoo right off of Oliver's chest, making him gasp in pain. 

At the Arrow hideout... 

Diggle walked up to the main platoform where Felicity was typing on her computer. 

'How much longer?' he asked. 

' "How much longer"? We literally had to reroute the electro-optical digital imaging from every reconnaissance satellite I could gain access to.' John put his head in his hands, walking away from Felicity. 

'Then we had to capture data in a 4-dimensional array, which could then be parsed using a real time algorithm. Literally, solving cold fusion would have been easier,' Curtis piped up. 

'Okay. I'm sorry. I've just been at this so long I don't know which way is up,' John apologised. 'And Oliver's been gone for six days and -' Felicity turned towards him, as he'd suddenly fallen silent. 

'And what?' She pressed. She turned to see Oliver stumbling into the hideout, carrying his suit jacket and his quiver of arrows. 'Oliver?' she gasped in shock at his state. 'Oh, my God.' 

'Oliver?' John asked. He dropped the quiver to the ground. 

'Chase had me -' he said softly, pulling off his jacket, wincing, and throwing that too, to the floor. 'Then he let me go.' He stumbled slightly up the steps. 

'Go slow, man,' John urged. He stopped on the first step. 

'It's over,' Oliver said in a tone that meant defeat. 

'Oliver, we're gonna get this son of a bitch for whatever he did to you,' John said. 

'John, it's - it's - it's over for me. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm shutting everything down.'