Her skin glints under the fluorescent lights and only Thea Queen can manage to maintain a willowy beauty about her as she wrestles a man's lifeless body behind a dumpster. An underrated talent.

No one gave a second glance at the blood splattered girl walking down the street in her skimpy dress, six inch heels dangling from one hand, a dagger in the other. Thea hardly took this as a surprise: this was the Glades where no one saw anything and no one knew anyone… Unless it was for a pretty penny, of course. This was where sickness festered and infected the city. This was her home.

The first thing she had done when she got back to her apartment was ignore the blood - her blood - that clung to the fluffy white carpet. Instead, she lit her fireplace and let her fingertips wander dangerously close to the flickering flames, each hint of heat reminding her she could feel pain, that she was alive. She burns her pretty dress and washes off a stranger's blood and acts like everything is normal again because that's what Queens do. That's what Queens are good at. Thea makes her way to the bathroom, stripping off her underwear and avoiding glimpses at her blood stained reflection in the mirror. The water is scalding and she's only in the shower long enough for the bright red on her skin to fade into nothingness and slide down the drain before she can't breathe again. Before she feels life and death fighting over her body, fighting for her soul like it had only days ago. It's a warzone in her mind but Thea is on the losing side and the water won't stop pounding against her skin, the water won't let up and she's finding herself curled up in the corner of the tub, the steady stream of water washing the tears from her face. She's weak and she knows it but she can't bring herself to stop, she can't bring herself to think of anything other than The Pit.

Thea is barely able to drag herself out of the shower without curling into fetal position and it sickens her. Everything she's done leading up to this shell of a person she's become was all in order to be strong, to stop being in the damsel in distress but look at her now: breaking down at the first memory of what she'd been through. It was pathetic. It was weak. It proved everything had been done in vain.

When she sees Sara is when she knows she's really gone off the deep end but nevertheless, the older woman stands above her, dressed in black spandex and a blonde wig cascading down her back. The smirk spread across her pink lips looks taunting and far from the deer in headlights look she had on her face when Thea had an arrow trained on her.

"What, poor little rich girl can't take a little resurrection?" Sara taunts, "At least you got a second chance. Look at me, Thea: I'm dead. I'm dead, and you're alive and the first thing you do is kill someone. What kind of twisted humor is that, huh?" Sara circles her like a lioness hunting her prey and Thea can't find that rabid blood lust in her, not when she's being confronted with her own truths, her own demons. All she can do is listen.

"You're not real." Thea chokes out, a feeble attempt to shoo away Sara (but she's not Sara, Sara's dead).

"You're right, I'm not." Sara offers the brunette a lackadaisical shrug, "You're just crazy. A crazy, psycho kiler. Admit it. Admit it!" Sara's lethargy is gone in seconds and reminds Thea that killing Sara had been a lucky shot. Sara was a lioness at heart, always ready to rip away at her prey and right now, Thea was no longer the hunter.

"I couldn't… I couldn't stop it." Her chest heaves and for the second time tonight, she struggles to breathe.

"Bullshit." Sara crouches down to look Thea, staring into her widened eyes, "The Thea I know wouldn't have killed that asshole. The Thea I know wouldn't have killed me." The words were spat and Thea focused on counting the tiles of her bathroom floor.

"Maybe I'm not the Thea you know anymore." The words fall out of her mouth hushed and whispered as if she's revealing a great secret and not talking to herself, naked, on her bathroom floor.

"Really?" Sara scoffs, "Then who are you? What are you?" The blonde woman probes until Thea is forced to choke out a half sob of an answer: "I'm not innocent anymore."


The next day, Thea shows up at the doorstep of the first person who had expected to see her: Malcolm Merlyn. It wasn't because he's her father, he's never been her father, it's because she has nothing left to lose. Her sanity had drowned in that pit and even if she could contact Oliver, he couldn't provide what Malcolm could. While Oliver would attempt to smooth her ragged edges, Malcolm would sharpen them. She needed to be trained, to be bred into something more than herself because she's hollow and empty and if she can't be a real person then she'll be a weapon.

Malcolm is hardly surprised to open the door and see Thea waiting on his doorsteps, he's hardly surprised to see something cold and dark behind vacant green eyes. He is, however, surprised to hear what she has to say.

"You look well, Thea." He lies and she can see right through him, he knows this.

Her eyes narrow and she doesn't bother with formalities as she enters his home, picking up the first weapon she sees: a sword. It's sturdy and heavy and sharp enough to slice her finger. That's what she'll need, a sword: a sword represents fatality in one strike, it's a far cry from the bow and arrow she wielded as a child or the one that Oliver uses in the name of vigilante justice. The sword is her own to wield, her own tool of destruction. After a moment, she puts down the sword in favor another object: a mask. A wide grin paints its face, taunting Thea as if it knew something she didn't as green eyes search it with mild interest.

"You told me something." Thea says suddenly as she watches her finger drag along the ridges of the mask, "You told me I shouldn't come back if I didn't want to. You were right." She doesn't bother to look at Malcolm's reaction before continuing her spiel, "Malcolm, once upon a time I came to you because thought you were the only person who wouldn't lie to me. I knew every bad thing you had done and I didn't trust you but I tolerated you because you didn't lie to me, you didn't betray me. Now I know better. I don't trust anyone."

"Why are you here, Thea?" Malcolm's voice is the only thing that dares to interrupt her speech.

"It's not to be your daughter or your soldier - it's to be your partner. You have contacts and if I'm going to be a mercenary, that's what I'll need. You're going to give me your contacts and do you know why, dad?" The bitterness stings her tongue, "You're the only person I know who's going to accept me no matter how many throats I slit. You'd be a hypocrite not to." Her attention is finally dragged away from her mask and she can't tell if Malcolm is pleased or terrified. She doesn't care. All Thea knows is that some crucial part of her was still in the pit and there was no turning back, the demons were here and they were pushing and prying until she was forced to become someone else, something else: a catalyst for her need to inflict pain and to feel it, the embodiment of her broken soul. She needed to become Cheshire.