"So this is a joke, right?" Isobel let go of the leather get up and let it fall back onto the metal table. "First of all, how do you even get into pants this tight?" She picked up the pants again and the grey leather squeaked under her fingers.

"Just try it on." Oliver insisted.

"Is this some sex thing for you? Because I was being serious when I said I wanted to help."

"Look, people can't know who you are. If they realise Isobel Anderson is running around at night fighting crime we can't do our job." Oliver explained.

"You're telling me that the only way we can stay safe is if I dress up like some superslut?" Anger and disbelief flooded her voice. "And why grey?"

"To go with these " Oliver handed her a small metal box.

"What is it?" Isobel accepted the box with a cocked eyebrow. "Jesus Christ!" her mouth dropped as she opened the heavy lid.

"They are just in case, I don't want you looking for trouble with them." He pointed down at the slim gold coloured knives he had given her.

"Thanks, Oliver." She didn't have any other words as she ogled the knives. Her fingers were itching to play with them.

"Go ahead try them out." He laughed as she barely hid her desire.

Isobel giggled as she grabbed two and weighed them in her palms. Tossing one up in the air it spun twice before she caught it by the handle with a grin. She picked out another and slowly started throwing them up and catching them again. She juggled the knives for a few minutes before she caught one and flung it across the room towards the target she had left up. In quick succession the other two followed hitting the picture of Oliver square on the nose each time. Isobel admired her work before Oliver cut in.

"I think we should take my picture down." He sounded a little confused by her accuracy.

"I don't know, he helps me practice." Isobel shrugged her response. "I've seen you kill me a million times. I throw daggers at him so that I can look at you without cowering in fear."

"I'm never going to kill you."

"Never is an awfully time." Oliver still didn't get it. Isobel knew he wasn't an immediate threat. She was a logical smart girl she knew Oliver wouldn't hurt her. It was what Oliver was a part of, it was brotherhood he was affiliated with, and they wouldn't hesitate to hurt her. Her fear of him had nothing to do with him; it had everything to do with her, with her experience, her abuse. Oliver was never going to understand that and instead could only think to assure her that he wasn't going to kill her. A statement that could easily become a lie when there where so many unknowns about her. "I'm going to try on those pants." Isobel walked away from him.

"Fine." She heard his unnecessary response causing her to turn back around to look at him. One look into his eyes, one glance to watch him itching the mark over his chest, one peek at the vice like grip his free hand was in, and she realised. Oliver did understand, he understood so much more than she was giving him credit for.

"Fine." Isobel parroted back before turning back around and for the first time in her life she wished she were a hell of a lot better with words.

Isobel thought she had dispelled her worries about the outfit but seeing it in the mirror and she wasn't so sure.

"Hey so, Oliver?" She called through the thin bathroom door.

"Yeah." She heard his muffled reply.

"How did you get my measurements?"

"Best guess." He responded after a minute.

"You really were a playboy at one point weren't you?"

"A folly of my youth. Why?"

"Nothing."

"Are you going to come out at some point?"

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About what possibly possessed me to want this." Isobel whispered under her breath as she adjusted the top again. "Okay." She yelled as she opened the door and stepped out. "Can you tell me your aversion to sleeves?"

Isobel tried to fully embody the confidence she knew she needed to have to wear an outfit like this. It was a little like work, when she was wearing the slutty lingerie she needed to be the type of person that rocked it, here she needed to be the type of person that rocked a leather bustier and pants with a tightly tapered leg.

"If you need to use those knives you are going to have a bit of trouble in leather sleeves." Oliver shrugged and pretended he wasn't checking her out, not that Isobel could even begin to notice. "Here's this too." He tossed her a scrap of grey that she caught mid-air.

"Am I supposed to put this on my face?"

"Yeah."

"For humour's sake." She snorted a little but wrapped the grey mask over her eyes and adjusted it slightly. "So this is definitely a sex thing."

"What's a sex thing?" A male voice asked from the top of the stairs. Isobel looked up quickly to see Diggle looking at her.

Isobel had mixed feelings for the man. He was nice, he was loyal, and brave and strong and if Isobel had even a quarter of a brain cell left she would be going after him. But seeing as Isobel was certifiably insane she obviously kept her distance.

"What do you think?" She asked after a minute. She gave a little spin while her leather boots, the only thing that actually belonged to Isobel, squeaking a little on the concrete.

"You're going to need a jacket." Diggle nodded his approval. "But it's a perfect fit."

"See, I told you."

"Fine you win. Now you go get in your get up and let's get out of here." Isobel urged.

"Felicity wanted me to tell you, she's running a little late but she should be here in a few. With Slade alive, it's all hands on deck."

"I don't want her working on anything too close to Slade, he's mine." Oliver growled as he stripped the mannequin holding his costume before he walked over to the bathroom Isobel had just vacated.

Isobel busied herself by focusing on strapping her sheathed daggers around her upper thigh so that her fingers just brushed against their hilt.

"He doesn't scare me." Isobel shrugged.

"Liar." Oliver stuck his head out of the bathroom to keep talking while he got dressed.

Isobel scowled at the accusation but could say nothing to contradict it. He did scare her, not because she feared his violence, which she took as an unequivocal certainty, but because she could see the look in his eye. That was a man that had lost everything, she knew that look well she had worn it herself for years, and there was only one word for it, desperation. An angry man very rarely scared her, a desperate man had nothing to lose, he was unpredictable by nature, he cared for no one, and at that point hardly cared for himself. He would sacrifice himself because he had nothing else to lose and that was very scary. Angry men kill, desperate men destroy and anyone that didn't know the difference had lived a very good life.

"He doesn't scare me." Isobel repeated mostly to herself, as if to convince herself that she wasn't petrified of what that man would do to Oliver. She tried to convince herself that she was only worried about Oliver because that would mean loosing her best chance to exact some revenge but in reality she was worried for him, for the man that she had absurdly developed a crush on. She was convinced that liking even a hair on Oliver's head must mean she was crazy so she refused to acknowledge it.

Oliver led her on a tour of the city from the rooftops. Isobel was slightly slower and much more clumsy than him.

"You have to keep up!" he scolded from a building away from her.

"You have to stop jumping buildings like the damn Easter bunny!" Isobel once again flung herself off the edge of an apartment building and skipped the small gap before landing closer to Oliver. "Seriously, what's wrong with using the sidewalk like everyone else?"

"You see anyone else walking down the sidewalk with a bunch of knives strapped to their thigh?" He was getting more than a little annoyed with her.

"You want to know a secret Oliver?" Isobel was getting a little fed up with him as well. So far this was nothing like she thought it was going to be. Oliver had taken her on large loops of the same empty section of the city and she was starting to see that his plan was to keep her as far away from the action as he possibly could.

"No-" Oliver's snappy response was cut off by an ear piercing scream.

"Jesus!" Isobel's eyes went wide as she looked around.

"Stay here!" He ordered, and she did for a minute but Isobel never was very good at following orders.

Oliver had just descended a rusty fire escape into the ally where the screams had come from and Isobel ran after him. She paused on the landing above him to assess the scene. Five men, large bulking men in heavily protected in thick Kevlar vests. She was a ways away but she could hear the unmistakable Russian profanities escape their lips as Oliver disarmed them one at a time. Isobel could see Oliver had it mostly under control but he turned towards someone she couldn't quite make out and yelled at them to run. Just as the words left his mouth she saw one of the men he had disarmed lunge towards him with a glint of silver in his hand. It took Isobel a second to realise that it was a knife.

"Oli - Arrow!" She shouted before reaching for one of her own knives and hurling it at his attacker. The golden dagger sunk into the man's meaty hand causing him to release his knife.

Oliver spun just in time to see her actions before he aimed a powerful punch to the man's jaw. It should have knocked him out if not kill him but the man acted like it was a small tickle.

"Jesus." Isobel repeated as Oliver aimed yet another blow only this time barely knocking the man around. She looked on from above for another second before she jumped into the fight the best she could. These guys were strong and every man that Oliver put down was just getting right back up.

She heard them talking and although it took a moment for her brain to translate once she did she knew these were the men she was looking for.

"We don't have time for this!" one of the men shouted at his partners. "We have to find the girl."

Isobel's actions halted for a second and that was enough time for the hulking man to get the upper hand. He pulled her around so that his muscular arms choked her neck.

"Gotcha." He grunted.

"No," Isobel panted just as she saw Oliver raise his bow. "I've got you!" Her hand twisted back, in a way that would have been unbearable for most people, to grab at one of her knives. She grasped it at just the very edge of the butt and shoved it into the man's kneecap. He doubled over in pain as the blade hit bone.

She would have liked to say that she 'let' Oliver take care of the other men but in reality she was wiped out. Isobel could barely catch her breath and the bruises on her neck felt like stones weighing her down. The man she had taken down tried to crawl away while she was distracted.

Isobel caught him with her boot pressing into his chest.

"Where do you think you are going?" She whispered, leaning closer to his face. "We aren't done yet."

"We have to go." Oliver used that scary voice he was becoming known for.

"I'm not done yet." Isobel protested as her boot dug further into the suffering man's chest.

"This isn't how we do things." Oliver argued back.

"This might not be how you do things but this is my best lead and I'm not letting him go until he answers my questions."

"We have no way to bring him back."

"Call for a car or I'll take him in a taxi, either way he's mine and I'm getting answers."

He sighed and she could hear the resignation in it. She watched him turn around and talk on the fancy earpiece. Hers had lasted about 3 seconds of jumping around on buildings before the chatter started giving her a headache and she took it out. "What are you doing?" She asked the man as he kept struggling, although his movements were relatively weak due to his injury. Isobel knew the easiest thing to do would be to knock him out but she wanted him to suffer, she wanted to feel the most pain possible.

Isobel sunk to her knees with the man resting between her legs. She grabbed a knife and ran it lightly over his face.

"I'm going to enjoy making you talk." She leaned forward to whisper the words in the man's ear. "Every scream you make, it's going to be like a song to my ears. You'll beg for death by the time I'm done. But I won't kill you," She started tracing a star over his chest with her knife. "No, I'm going to let you live. I'm going to let you crawl back to the Bratva." Her words were so low she had to practically lie on top of the man so that her mouth landed near his ear. "And then you will have to tell them about how I broke you." She sat back up and reached over to the blade still lodged in the man's knee, she twisted it slightly and earned a growl. "Trust me, I will break you, you will talk. And we all know what the Bratva do to rats."

"The car is coming." Oliver broke her concentration. "Five minute's out."

"Good. We can take him to my place."

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my whole life. He knows where I can find him."

"We'll see." Oliver didn't agree with her plan, that much was obvious.

"The only thing I'm going to see is what colour he bleeds." Isobel pressed on the blade again earning another scream from the man.

He was blindfolded in the small Mini Felicity picked them up in and Isobel had to practically drag him into her old house. Glass and broken personal possessions still littered the floor, making it look like a bomb had gone off. She forced him into a chair with Oliver's help and strapped his arms behind the back with his feet tied to the legs.

"What's your name?" She asked in Russian.

"Fuck you." He responded with a wad of spit lobbed out of his mouth.

"Wrong answer." Isobel slapped his face with an audible crack but it only earned a chuckle from the man. "You like that?" She asked before she moved closer and pulled his blindfold off. "Because we can go all night if you like." Her hand pressed on his knee earning a roar. "Now tell me your name!"

"Viktor." He answered through clenched teeth.

"Good boy, you keep answering my questions like this and you won't lose too many fingers." Isobel threatened.

"You are just a coward in your mask, you won't hurt me." He taunted and Isobel should have tuned it out but she wasn't actually to experienced at this and didn't quite manage.

"You think I'm a coward?" Isobel snorted. "You really don't know who I am." She reached up and slipped the mask off her face, not listening to the protests of Oliver and Felicity's squeak. "I'm his Kotonok, and I'm looking for him."

"You're her. The mark." Viktor muttered as he looked at her.

"We aren't here to talk about me. I want to know where Dmitry is."

"Commander Artamonov is looking for you too."

"Yeah the bounty gave that bit away." Isobel used a knife to trace the features on his face.

"Stupid girl." Victor spat with a chuckle.

Isobel didn't like that and like a flash her knife sunk into his right shoulder.

"What was that?" She asked over his howls.

"Bitch. He doesn't want you dead. He want's you back."

Isobel twisted the knife in his shoulder as she corrected him.

"He barely had me to begin with, the next time we're in the same room only one of us will breathing. Now where is he?" She asked again.

"I can't tell you that." He grit his teeth.

"Oh good, I wanted to do this the hard way." She pulled the knife out of his shoulder. "We're just starting."

Somewhere in the four hours that she sliced at him the lines between reality and dream blurred. She frequently would imagine herself cutting Dmitry's skin to ribbons rather than Viktor's. It was like it gave her a second wind to know that she was one step closer to killing the man that tortured her for years. He still hadn't talked but she knew she could do it, just a little further; she just had to push him a little further. But she needed a break, she needed to talk to someone she didn't actively want to kill. Stepping outside she saw Felicity rubbing her eyes out by her car.

"Hey." Isobel greeted with a small wave.

"Hey, I was just about to head out. I'm not much help with the torture thing and I have work in the morning."

"No, no that's cool. I was just -" Isobel paused as she thought about what she wanted to say. "I just – I thought this would be easier." Her head slumped into her hand as she talked. "Those men, they did awful things to me, I shouldn't have any guilt about this."

"Isobel, guilt is good, it's the only thing separating you from them. If you liked this you'd be doing it to me not them. Oliver wouldn't let you if you liked it, he would have stopped you. He trusts you. We all know this needs to be done to find Dmitry; you are doing what you need to. Just because I don't have the stomach for it doesn't make it wrong. If I had lived through the stuff you've seen, honestly I don't think I'm strong enough to even make it where you are."

"This isn't strength, this is strongly compacted fear for me to hide behind." Isobel whispered and suddenly it was like she wasn't strong enough to hold up her own body weight. She pitched forward her head resting in the crook of Felicity's neck. Tears poured down her face while her whole body shook.

Felicity and Isobel had never been close; they didn't really have much interaction at all really, despite spending copious amounts of time together. But Isobel needed someone and Felicity was there and her words were kind and non-judgemental. She was what Isobel needed.

"It's okay. I promise, it's all over now. You're safe with us."

"This won't be over till I kill him, or he kills me."