I do not own Arrow.
After a long night of planning, Oliver, Slade, Thea and the five guards had managed to come up with a plan to take down Takeo, which, if what Talia had said was true, was not going to be easy. Oliver also made a mental note to himself to tell Waller and Lyla to station more guards in the prison, once they made it out of this alive. Oliver luckily had bow and a quiver of arrows, Thea had armed herself with a gun and a sword strapped to her back and Oliver hoped that the six months she had spent training with Malcolm would help her. That was when one of the guards entered. "We have a problem. I checked the prison cell with our other prisoner, he's gone."
Oliver groaned. "Digger Harkness."
The guard nodded, while Slade tensed.
"Who?" Thea asked.
"Rogue former ASIS agent." Slade explained as Oliver looked over him. "I trained him."
Oliver sighed. He should have figured before he turned to Thea, noticing her confused look. "A.R.G.U.S. caught him three years ago and recruited him but he went rogue again. I caught him during Christmas and put him here." He explained.
"Your friend Takeo must have figured he couldn't take us out alone, so he let Harkness out." Slade said.
"We need to get out of here and find them." Oliver said as he turned to the guards. "Stick together. Takeo is a trained assassin and Harkness is a dangerous mercenary, they'll try to take us out one by one or catch us by surprise."
They went out, walking down the woods as more old memories started coming back, making Oliver and Slade nostalgic.
"What exactly is this Takeo's beef with you?" Slade asked and Oliver sighed.
"My past is coming back to haunt me." Oliver explained tiredly.
"Seems to be a recurring theme with you, kid." Slade noted and Thea nodded.
"I don't know why." Oliver admitted.
"Well, it's not really that complicated." Slade said as he stepped in front of Oliver. "You suffer from survivor's guilt. You can't get over the death of your father."
"Takeo Yamashiro has nothing to do with my father." Oliver protested.
"Ollie, I know there are a lot of things I might not know about you but one thing I know for sure is that with you, everything has to do with Dad." Thea pointed out.
"Thea is right, kid." Slade said in agreement. "You and I are not dissimilar. We're both haunted by our pasts and the only way to bury that ghost is by forgiving yourself."
"Forgiving myself? For what?" Oliver wondered.
"You blame yourself for your father's suicide… and everything else that has gone wrong since. You need to forgive yourself for your sins." Slade said.
"You say that like it's easy." Oliver scoffed.
"It's the hardest thing in the world." Slade said with a pointed look, which Oliver had not seen in years. The look of his brother. Slade was one of the few people in the world who knew Oliver better than most people and knew exactly how Oliver thinks and how to find and exploit his every weakness, which is why he had been one of Oliver's most dangerous enemies. But right now, they weren't enemies anymore. They were what they were once upon a time. Brothers.
Suddenly, one of the radios they were carrying went off with a crackle.
"Oliver Queen. I know you're there."
Oliver turned to the guard whose radio had gone off as he handed it to Oliver, who called out. "Takeo."
"You may have found new allies but that won't help you." Takeo said.
"When I find you, I'm gonna stop you. You and Harkness are going down." Oliver said.
"That's easier said than done. You took away my family. I'm going to take away yours. But before I kill you, I'm going to kill everyone that's ever been close to you, starting with your sister, then Laurel. How many people can Oliver Queen lose before there's nothing left of Oliver Queen? Your father. Yao Fei. Shado. Tommy. Your mother. Sara—"
Oliver snarled as he crushed the radio in his hand, while Thea tensed.
"Hey! We could've reached out for help!" The guard protested.
"He's blocking all communication with the outside." Oliver reminded.
"What did he mean by Sara?" Thea asked. Oliver was about to open his mouth to protest but she gestured, cutting him off. "No, everytime I bring her up, you end up evading it."
"Because this isn't the time, we just need to focus—"
"Well, I'm not, OK?" Thea snapped. "Knowing that you're keeping something from me, again, it's keeping me everything but focused right now. You said Malcolm had Sara killed but you didn't tell me what exactly happened."
Oliver sighed. "He didn't kill her directly. He… used someone. He put them under the influence of a drug… so she wouldn't know what she was doing."
"She?" Thea stiffened, hoping Oliver was not implying what she was thinking he was as she got up to her feet. "She who?"
Oliver looked at her darkly as the dreadful feeling filling Thea was getting stronger and stronger. "You killed Sara." He revealed and Thea gasped, holding herself by her head as if she wanted to rip her hair off.
"Oh, God…" Thea whispered, pacing around before the reality hit her. "Sara… no… she was my friend…" She whirled on Oliver. "How could you not tell me?!"
"Because you weren't you." Oliver explained.
"Oh, God!" Thea snapped. It was one thing that she had chosen Malcolm over Oliver, Robert and Moira but this shattered her world even more than the revelation of her mother complicit in the Undertaking and Malcolm being her father.
"You weren't in control of your actions, you can't blame yourself." Oliver assured.
"I'm an idiot!" Thea exploded, as if she had not heard Oliver's words.
"No, you're not."
"What the Hell are we even doing here?!" Thea snapped.
Before Oliver could assure her, they heard a whooshing noise through the air as Oliver tackled Thea to the ground, while the guards ducked before the boomerangs could cut into them.
"I asked myself the same thing, luv, when your brother left me here to rot." Harkness said as he neared them.
Oliver got up and fired an arrow but Harkness blocked it with one of his boomerangs before Slade pulled out his sword and he and Oliver engaged Harkness but Harkness pulled out a pair of boomerangs, blocking their attacks before he threw them. Oliver and Slade dodged, while some of the guards ducked but two of them were cut down. The boomerangs were sailing through the air and returning back to Harkness but Oliver fired a pair of arrows and shot them down, sending them clattering to the ground.
Harkness was exchanging blows with Slade before Harkness was pushed back and next thing anyone else knew, with a roar of rage, Thea rushed at Harkness and punched him hard in the face, knocking him down. Thea pulled out her sword and aimed it at Harkness's chest, about to finish him off.
"Thea, no!" Oliver exclaimed.
"Why not?" Thea snapped.
"Because you're not a killer!" Oliver pleaded.
"Yeah, tell that to Sara." Thea said, the anger flooding all the guilt she was feeling.
"Don't do it, Thea." Slade said with his hands up as he approached Thea with an understanding look. "I know how easy it is to give into that pain, the rage—"
"Don't pretend to understand how I'm feeling!" Thea yelled as she glared at him.
"But I do. All that anger and guilt you're feeling that you can't even breathe, like if you're in a nightmare from which there's no escape. You think that taking all that anger out by killing someone is going to make it easier but it won't. It's just going to make it harder and harder and one day you'll look back and realize what you've done and you won't like the person that you had become and it'll make you wish you had killed yourself instead to escape all that pain and rage and guilt you're feeling right now." Slade said.
Thea turned to him, seeing him give an understanding look as she realized this was what Slade and Roy must have felt, when the Mirakuru wore off.
"There's nothing I can do to change what I've done and it will haunt me for the rest of my life. You only made a mistake, when you trusted Merlyn, Sara's blood isn't on your hands but his. If you kill Harkness, his blood will be on your hands… and you'll plunge yourself into an abyss from which you might never find your way out. You may be Merlyn's daughter by blood… but that doesn't make you him."
Everyone stared at Thea, wondering what would she do. She panted out in rage, contemplating Slade's words for what seemed to be an eternity before she started to breathe more heavily and punched Harkness, knocking him out. She then fell on her knees, unable to take it anymore as she broke down in tears like a little child and Oliver approached her, pulling her in for a hug as she sobbed into his shoulder.
