Every time he could feel it gripping his heart, seizing his mind, corrupting his judgement, it became more difficult to fight it back, to keep perspective. His journey to find Hawkman's weapon was not unlike an Indiana Jones movie, riddled with traps, villains, and nature's finest monsters. And every time he had to deal with humans? His temper was getting harder to control.
He started to drink. Before realizing it only made it worse. He had his hands wrapped around someone's throat before he realized he was in far deeper than he'd ever feared.
The darkness was winning.
The tighter its clutch on his heart, the more he resented the mission he was on, the more he dwelled on his issues with Clark, with Mercy, with Lois even. He stopped praying, learning to spite God.
And then God saved him. Through Chloe.
Oliver had made the mistake of trying to focus on a divine being that he knew nothing about. The more Darkseid overtook him, the harder it became to keep faith. He was searching for something intangible, when what he needed was the tangible. God was everywhere, and he was looking for Him in nothingness.
He had a dream about her, about her smiling face, and that was when enlightenment finally occurred. God is love. And the greatest love he knew in the tangible world was between him and Chloe.
Until that dream, he'd avoided thoughts of her; they were miserable, filled with guilt for being away from her, fear of what she would think if she knew he'd been marked, anger with himself for not trusting her with his nightmare. The less he thought about her, the easier it was not to commit suicide. Or so he'd thought.
But it wasn't until he allowed himself to think about her that he's started to regain control.
His fingers tightening around another mans throat, slowly crushing his esophagus as if they had a mind of their own suddenly loosened their grip slightly as he forced himself to concentrate on Chloe's smile, like it had been in his dream. And then the man was slumping to the floor in front of him, coughing and alive, as Oliver walked away. She had helped him walk away.
It became something of a game, however serious. Each time rage bubbled forth he forced thoughts of her on himself, intently concentrating on the most minute of details, everything he knew about her, his favorite things, seeing how much he knew about her, how much he could come up with about one tiny detail.
She wishes she had longer fingernails, but she keeps them short because it's easier to type that way. She almost never paints them, but she still owns a bottle of green nailpolish. They're still long enough to scratch a little, and they look classier than really long nails anyway.
She thinks her hair looks best straightened, but I like it when it's tousled with messy curls and it looks like I've just run my hands through it. Her shampoo smells like mango. She used to use strawberry scent but ever since she read Twilight and found out the main character wore strawberry scented shampoo, she stopped using it because she felt ridiculous. I like both, but the mango suits her.
She has two bottles of perfume. One that smells like vanilla that she wears for ordinary occasions, one that smells like jasmine for special events like Clark and Lois's engagement party. I can recognize either scent on any woman from what feels like a mile away.
She owns a lot of different jackets, especially trench coat styles, which make her feel like a reporter or a PI in a film noir. She has one plaid jacket and one that's green leather. For some reason, 90% of the time she gets in trouble, she's wearing the plaid, which is eerily symbolic of her relationship with Clark. I noticed she got the green leather jacket shortly after she became Watchtower full time. It's my favorite article of clothing that she owns that's not lingerie. I once had a sex dream about her where she was wearing that jacket [in the beginning], even though she was going through a divorce at the time, and we were only just getting to be closer as friends. I couldn't look at her for a full month without thinking of her naked.
There are six different colors in her eyes. Dark brown, gold, jade green, forest green, grass green, and olive green. Her eyes always dart to the left corner when she's trying not to laugh at me.
Her favorite place to be kissed is at the nape of her neck. Her eyes practically roll back in her head when I start teasing her there. Her favorite place to kiss me is right behind my ear. She knows it drives me crazy.
She pretended that she never opened the gift from the MacDougal Inn gift shop, but I've seen her stirring her coffee with that spoon. She also doesn't know that I found the stash of Green Arrow paraphernalia that she collected while she was MIA and I became so popular because I revealed my identity. My favorite is the Green Arrow cereal box complete with collectable toy spoon. It changes from white to green when you dip it in milk.
Her guilty pleasure is romance novels. She owns more than I can count, and almost all of them are in the mystery or science fiction genre, which really isn't that surprising. There's one that's cover is practically falling off from being read so many times, and the half-naked guy on the cover looks suspiciously similar to me.
She hates that she's so short, and she wears six-inch heels on a regular basis in an attempt to make up for it, but I like how tiny she is. I like that she has to tilt her head all the way back to look at me when I hug her. I like how light and delicate she feels when I pick her up, whether I'm sweeping her off her feet or throwing her over my shoulder. I like that she can curl up in my lap when we watch a movie together and I can completely encase her in my arms. I like feeling like I can protect her and make her feel safe.
She has no idea that I once read every single article she's ever written, starting her freshman year at the Torch, in a course of three days.
She claims she doesn't like peanut butter, but I know for a fact that Lois had to help her give it up for me.
She has the most brilliant, wonderful, endearing smile I've ever seen in my life, and I count the number of times in a day that I'm lucky enough to cause it. My record is 75 times in twenty-four hours. Her smile lights up the entire room better than a thousand candles. It brightens even the darkest day for me.
She loves me.
Slowly, it became easier. He found himself concentrating on her almost every second of the day, and his journey itself, not just his battle against his own darkness, became easier. It became easy to pray again, simply because he fell asleep at night thanking God for her. She was the light in his life that banished all darkness, and God had given him that, however little Oliver believed he deserved it.