Chapter 7

Author's Note: Hello there. It's not been like over half a year since the last time I updated this, right?

It was like addiction.

The first time he tracked her down to the brothel, Oliver had been able to convince himself of the necessity of it.

In the moment, he had allowed himself to get lost in the lust and desire he had left for Kara, and the unbridled rage he had felt towards every piece of scum that had willing frequented the brothel. It had stirred loose feelings in Oliver that he hadn't even been fully aware of before that very moment. Had drawn in fantasies of a kind that Oliver hadn't been consciously aware of since he had left Russia. He had tried to tell himself that was all it was. Hormonal drives, hunter's instinct, all on top of a sense of misery that the brothel had made him feel.

Yet, it had dragged on. In those moments, that first time. Oliver had felt it, that long supressed part of his mind once again, finally, blissfully, given form. It had been there. Invisible, but at his side, from almost the moment he had set foot in the brothel. Oliver had sensed it, there at his side, swimming at his shoulder. For the first time in almost a decade the monster had been there with him.

He had told himself it was temporary. Tried to convince his own subconscious that he would be able to repress it the moment he was away from everything that had driven those thoughts to the front of his mind.

Since Russia, since Talia and Anatoly, he had convinced himself to shut down the monster. To not give it a real voice. He let it out when he needed it, when torture or murder were necessary. Beyond that, Oliver had learnt to crush down the voice that snarled in his ear in his darkest moments. It was what he was supposed to do, after all. Anatoly had instilled into him the value of caring for those that could not care for themselves, to use the corruption of the law to do what law-enforcers were incapable of. Talia had done the same, in a darker, more twisted way.

All his training, all his willpower, Oliver hadn't been able to control it.

Even as he had left the brothel after the first time he had felt the grip. The taloned hands that had curled around the base of his neck and refused to let go. The will to violence that he had felt walking through the brothel that first time only grew after he left. The mixture of hatred for what The Triad were doing and a dose of self-loathing at his own inability to do more left Oliver reeling.

More than that, it was Kara.

Magnitudes more than before she invaded his every moment. Flooded into his mind uncalled for, flashed in his thoughts without wanting. From the very first moment he had walked out of the brothel for the first time, forcing himself into clinical detachment so that he wouldn't be tempted to stay with her, to eke out a few more moments in her company. She had been there with him.

Try as he might to convince himself otherwise, Oliver had known that Kara wasn't just in his unconscious mind. Of his own accord he had thought of her. In moments alone in The Quiver when he thought on the times where she had been there with him, sparring with him, or debating him on philosophy, or fighting with him on how the other defined The League.

Other times, he thought of her when he was alone, in the early hours of the morning when the sun rose and The Green Arrow had to retreat from the streets. He thought on the times they had shared a bed, of the image of Kara's body writhing and twisting under him, of the displays of dominance when she would pin him down and ride him until neither of them could control themselves. The moments of wicked satisfaction as he buried his lips between her legs and revelled in her Kryptonese curses and the feeling of her nails drawing blood from his shoulders with her gip, or the moments of elation beyond description at her own mouth wrapped around him.

More frequently than he would like to admit, Oliver's mind drifted back to that fantasy. Of him and Kara, of bloodstains on the walls, of pure euphoria without remiss or regret.

The thing that he had felt swimming at his shoulder when he had been in the brothel, the taloned hand that had been reaching out for him. It had still been there. For a brief while, when he had been with Kara, it had receded, but the moment he had walked out of the brothel he had felt it again.

For all he had tried to ignore it, the presence that lingered there at all times, Oliver knew it was strong now. It took less than a week for him to break down and return to Kara to try and dampen down the other presence, to try and lock away the thoughts he had always strived to repress. There was nothing else in him, nothing in all his years of practice, of training, of understanding. Nothing that seemed to calm the tempest that existed in his mind. Nothing that calmed the storm like Kara.

She was almost surprised when she saw him again. Oliver saw it in her eyes the moment he walked back onto the floor of the brothel only five days after he had last been there. In the muttered whispers both before and after they had slept together, they had agreed Oliver would visit once every week, unless Kara managed to get in touch with him some other way. Oliver hadn't been able to wait that long and, once the faint surprise in Kara's eyes had faded, he knew that she hadn't wanted to wait that long either.

After that it took them both.

It was addiction.

Oliver found himself there almost daily, and they both revelled in the time that they spent together. None of the Triad members questioned why Oliver took to one girl in particular, his first conversation about Kara must have cleared that with them. That first night, he had spent more than double what any other man would have spent in a brothel like that and it had clearly left an impression.

After his second visit, he had made a very lucrative offer to the pimp who had approached him on his first visit. With delicate, but pointed, discussion Oliver had an outrageous price set for his every meeting with Kara (Sapphire, as they called her) so long as no other man was allowed to take her to a private room. It was a move that reeked of preference, of a favouritism that a man like Oliver Queen should not have shown, and yet Oliver had not been able to help himself. He felt a connection with Kara, a tugging like gravity that wouldn't allow him to willing share her with anyone else.

The rational part of his mind insisted that Kara wasn't his, that he had no right to claim dominion over her. After all, he had told himself a dozen times since he took her underwing that he didn't want to make Kara his. That all he wanted to do was teach her. More than that though, even after all his posturing on protecting her and making her transition into the Triad's operations as seamless and natural as possible, he had risked her safety by showing preference for her.

Oliver knew what it could mean. The Triad, amongst all their other crimes, ran a reasonably lucrative blackmail operation from their various brothels across the city. High ranking members of the city council, business owners, police officials, anyone who worked in a position of influence and set foot in a Triad brothel was a potential victim. Oliver Queen would undoubtedly have been high up that list even before he had shown an unabashed preference for one girl in particular.

Risk.

Mistake.

Danger.

Talia's scathing voice in Oliver's ear. Years since he had last seen her and that voice, that twisting of instinct that had filled his own mind, it was still right there with him. The same voice had been gleeful when he had first taken in Kara, thrilled that he had managed to ensnare Supergirl herself. For all he had done to change her, Kara had changed him.

No. Not changed.

The drive he felt, the invisible power that drew him to her, it wasn't new. It was the same hunter's instinct, the same predatorial drives that Talia, Yao Fei, Slade, his training, all of it, had built into him. Before, Oliver had kept those drives focused on criminals, on the scum that infected his city. Kara and her closeness; their connection, both physical and emotional, she had given that instinct a new focus. He had allowed it to happen, allowed her to get close. Allowed himself to get close enough to care. A mistake easily made that could not be undone.

It was something Oliver knew he couldn't control. His training. His conditioning. The way he had been programmed to be by a dozen different mentors over his five years of hell. He couldn't fight it any more than he could gravity. Kara had asked him about it, once. In a quiet moment in The Quiver, in the gentle silence they arrived at after they slept together.

"You can't beat it? Your conditioning?"

Oliver had let it sit between them for a while before he answered. "Most of the time, I don't want to. That's the nature of good conditioning. And I was trained by the best. Pushed to the edge and rebuilt with a whole bunch of conditioned shit that in my saner moments I wish I'd never had. But I work better when I go with it. Fighting it is…hard. It slows me down."

She had looked at him with something that had almost been pity, but Oliver hadn't been sure if she had been feeling it for him, or for herself. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, it had become clear to both of them how much things had changed from Oliver's original promise. How much Kara had changed.

Still, no matter how many times he visited her, no matter how many times he walked among the squalor of the brothel, Oliver didn't allow himself to feel it. The mission came first.

It was almost a month after the first time he found himself there, in that hole of desperation and misery, that Kara finally gave him information that made things change.

"They're getting suspicious."

Those had been Kara's exact words, whispered into his ear as Kara straddled his lap, grinding herself against him. Ever since the first time they had been together, when Kara had pointed out the poorly masked panel in the wall that had hidden a camera, they had taken extreme care to avoid Oliver's face being captured by the camera. The Triad were bad enough; Oliver's continued visits to Kara put them both at risk. If they were successful in taking down the brothel though, if they turned the relevant evidence over to the authorities, the SCPD could find out. If they saw Oliver arriving and spending time with the same woman day after day in the weeks leading up to the brothel getting taken down by The Green Arrow, that would be bad for both of them.

"They've noticed that they don't have any clean footage of you. They want me to slip something into your drink, get pictures."

The revelation drove out the arousal Oliver had been feeling with all the punch of a full combat call. His muscles tensed, preparing themselves for the adrenaline rush of mission time; his mind went into tactical mode, immediately trying to put together every possible alternative outcome to the situation they found themselves in.

Kara hadn't been able to gain full access to the computer systems in the back rooms of the brothel. She had done her best, but there were scare minutes a day when there were no eyes watching her. Not enough time to go through all the data in a single session, nor to copy the data to an external device. She had managed to pick up a few things, noticed a few documents that warranted further investigation, but not enough to hand off to the SCPD to guarantee a shutdown of The Triad's people smuggling operations.

If they were going to give her the time she needed, they were going to need a distraction, and they were going to need it soon.

"Thursday night," Oliver said, hands still firmly planted on Kara's ass to give anyone watching the camera the illusion he was enjoying himself still. "That's when the guard is weakest?"

Kara didn't answer verbally, just nodded her head.

"Be ready. I'll distract them, give you time to get to the backroom and copy everything we need. "

Two days later, a distraction was exactly what Oliver provided for her.

It had cost him a favour to Anatoly to organise one that The Triad wouldn't immediately cut and run from. There had been no doubt in Oliver's mind that had The Green Arrows shown up to storm the place, the Triad members in the backrooms would delete all the data on the hardware before retreating. Showing up in force like that would guarantee failure. Calling in the SCPD with an anonymous tip was off limits for exactly the same reason. That left him with one option, sending in the Bratva.

A rival gang encroaching on their territory was no reason for The Triad to bail immediately. The Bratva and The Triad had regular skirmishes over territory, cuts of certain drug trades, or even over private spats between their members. Oliver knew that if he could get a detachment of Bratva to rally against The Triad near the brothel, it would be just enough of a distraction to pull away enough guards for Kara to get into the backrooms and get them the data they needed.

It didn't sit right with him, asking for a favour like that from Anatoly. Ever since Russia, Oliver had enough goodwill in his wallet to ensure that he could call in any low-level favour without needing to do one for Anatoly in return. That kind of power came easily when one saved the life of the Pakhan of the Bratva. Calling in something like that through, a direct assault against a Triad front, Oliver knew it was going to cost him later down the line. Just that Anatoly had agreed without asking for a favour outright, allowing Oliver to give him what amounted to an I.O.U., that was worrying to him. It meant Anatoly had something in mind, something that would need to wait until the right moment before he could present it.

But it meant taking out The Triad.

It meant keeping Kara safe.

That would be enough for Oliver to accept any favour Anatoly asked of him.

He was perched on a rooftop two streets over when the first barrage of gunfire cut loose. Even if he couldn't make a full frontal assault on the place as The Green Arrow, being close by in case things went wrong seemed reasonable enough. So long as the Bratva constituted the main force going up against The Triad and he stayed out of sight unless absolutely needed, things would go to plan.

For a few long, almost painful minutes, Oliver ignored the gunfire. With all his effort he ignored the thoughts that burned into his mind of Kara getting caught up in the thick of it, or of her getting caught trying to sneak into the backroom. His control didn't last long, and Oliver loathed the feelings that coiled in his gut as he crossed the rooftops towards where the gunfire emanated from.

Anatoly had gone all in with Oliver's plan. His men were right at the brothel that The Triad ran, directly drawing out the majority of the Triad members who worked there into the gunfire. Oliver recognised all of the faces who had emerged from the brothel, over the weeks he had been studying the location he had learnt everything about the people who worked there. He knew all the faces, and all the crimes attached to them.

Watching the exchange on the street below brought an almost indescribable pain to Oliver, in a way he couldn't fully define. Bile rose in his throat at just the notion of allowing gangsters to shoot each other up in his city. Letting that kind of criminal activity happen ran counter to everything that he had tried to do for all the years that he had been The Green Arrow. Yet, it was just, in a way. Each time Oliver saw one of the gangsters, Triad or Bratva, catch a bullet, he knew it was just. They deserved suffering, they deserved to be hurt, they deserved to face penance for each and every single crime they had committed. Oliver was the one who dealt that penance out in Star City. Watching criminals deal that out to one another was…alien to him.

It felt wrong.

Oliver saw the harm they did to each other and knew, deep in his core, that he could have been the one hurting them. Because then, they would have known. They would have known that they were being hurt because it was what they deserved, not because they were fighting with some other criminal over something meaningless.

Even as he tasted bile watching it happen, Oliver turned away. He had higher priorities.

He had seen every face out on the street that he needed to. Every Triad member who worked the brothel with a firearm in his possession was on the street exchanging fire with the Bratva. The only members still inside were the bookkeepers and newest recruits.

Oliver's mission had started.

Kara had given him one distinct condition before he could fully execute his plan. She wanted him to secure the safety of the other women working in the brothel. It made sense really. If everything went according to their plan, if the Bratva caused enough of a distraction that Kara was able to copy all the data from the computers in the backrooms of the brothel, then the SCPD would be raiding the brothel, and two dozen other Triad owned enterprises, by the end of the week. In that scenario, there was no guarantee for the safety of the women who worked at the brothel. In the upheaval, there was every chance the enforcers would take their frustrations out on the women who they had coerced into working for them. Kara had made Oliver promise that he would do everything he could to get them to safety during the Bratva's assault.

Getting them to safety wasn't a concern at all, after all Oliver Queen funded two different shelters for displaced women in Star City alone. Getting them out of the brothel at all was his biggest worry. All it took would be a single Triad member to catch a glance of The Green Arrow and call for backup and it would all be over. Kara would be found out as they secured the backrooms to ensure he hadn't had access to their data stores, and the whole Triad would go to ground as they waited out the next attack they would expect. He needed them to get away completely clean. To make it look as though they had taken advantage of the chaos and run. He could do it, that wasn't in question. But the margin for error was high enough to make Oliver hesitate.

With the main street in a haze of bullets, Oliver rounded to the one that ran parallel, and dropped himself onto a fire escape he knew opened onto a window in the bar-half of the brothel. He stayed stationary at the window for a long minute, studying what he could see on the inside. Between the internal reflection of light and the dark hue of his armour, he knew he would be invisible to anyone looking out, he could afford the time. There was only one person visible to him, the bartender, nervously pacing up and down the main stretch of the room with a pistol clasped uncomfortably in one hand.

It wouldn't even be a challenge.

The moment the bartender turned his back to the window, Oliver made his move. The windows on that floor were an old, sliding style, frames; wooden and easy to manipulate. Oliver grabbed an arrow, jabbed the sharp tip into the gap, and pried the frame open. The moment the gap was large enough to accommodate his fingers, Oliver returned the arrow to his quiver and levered the window fully open. Once that was done, it took him seconds to cross the room and disable the bartender with a chokehold.

His next target was easy. Kara had told him exactly where he needed to look for the rest of the girls. Apparently, it had been part of her introduction to the operation of the brothel. If they were ever to come under attack, by law enforcement or otherwise, all the working girls were told to gather in the same room. There would be a single guard in there. Oliver knew he wouldn't be able to avoid a direct fight, but the plan had already formed.

He crossed the bar, headed to the familiar corridor Kara had lead him down a few dozen times, and squared up to the door he knew he needed. His bow was fixed to the magnetic hook on his quiver, Oliver knew he couldn't leave any sign that The Green Arrow had been there. It needed to look right, he had to dress the scene.

A breath to steel himself.

Another to plan.

Back pressed to the wall he reached out, gripped the handle, and flung the door inward.

Two gunshots, neither anywhere close to where his arm had quickly snaked back into cover with the rest of him. The thugs outside wouldn't notice them, and if they did, would put it down to the chaos of the firefight. Oliver waited, heard the footsteps, mapped how far away they sounded against what he knew the layout of the room to be, and ducked in.

Oliver went low, springing straight into a barrel roll below the firing angle the Triad thug would undoubtedly be holding his gun at. He had gotten it perfect. He came out of the roll no more than a foot away from the gunman. The fear of seeing The Green Arrow, shock at the quick movement, or just general unpreparedness, whatever it was stunned the gunman into inaction. Oliver barely had to try when he wrenched the gun out of his hand, and planted a firm kick into his sternum, sending him stumbling back.

The gunman landed on his back, on the floor among a dozen half-naked young women. For all of a moment they shared the same stunned expression the gunman had at seeing The Green Arrow, but then they all started moving. Oliver had been counting on it.

Public or not, hidden in the shadows as Oliver always was, he wasn't a secret. In Star City, he was a myth, one that meant damnation for some and salvation for others. A story whispered about in dark alleys between criminals as they watched for any hint of disturbance. A fable for the those like the women in the brothel, traded among each other in the hopes he might one day save them. He was the dark protector, a call to action against the forces that preyed on the weak and defenceless.

The sight of him there, in that den of squalor and inequity, it called the women The Triad had abused to action.

They took the window he had put in front of them, the opportunity for revenge, and they threw it open with both hands. A dozen pairs of sharply pointed, high-heel clad feet lashed out at the slumped man on the ground before he had even fully stopped falling. Oliver didn't consider looking away for a second. The abuse must have gone on for minutes, Oliver didn't keep track. Blood had begun to pool on the floor by the time the last of the women stopped lashing out at the symbol of the men who had taken advantage of them.

Even so, Oliver was acquainted well enough with death to know that the man on the floor was still drawing breath. That was when he finally moved, when each of the women had taken a step back, realised with glances down at their own feet, shoes spotted with blood, what had just occurred. They all stepped back away from him as he approached, not that Oliver really registered it happening on a conscious level. Oliver studied the body for a moment, chose a point on the temple that had already been damaged and, with the gun he had stolen from the unconscious figure, slammed a fatal blow into the skull. He felt the skull cave under his attack, saw the rush of blood that followed.

Audible gasps around the room, nothing that slowed him down.

"Take the open window from the bar into the street," The voice modular built into his suit turned his voice into a harsh crackling, like glass being ground underfoot. "There's a shelter on the corner of Hamilton and Swan, you'll be taken care of."

Maybe it was the sudden violence they had all witness, maybe the sound of his voice, but the women all began to rush out of the room without a word.

He waited, stood in the exact same spot until the sounds of hurried footsteps had disappeared entirely.

The other body took hardly any time at all to dress. All it took was Oliver pulling one of Yao Fei's favourite tricks, pinching the right bundle of nerves to make the man spring back to consciousness. By the time the thug was back up on his feet, Oliver had positioned himself just outside the door to where the women had been penned in. Three shots, none of them immediately lethal fired from the stolen pistol in Oliver's hand and the thug was back on the floor. He hadn't even seen Oliver there, not really, just a shape hidden in the gloom of the brothel and the haziness of his vision after awakening.

Oliver crossed the room once again to study his handiwork. The shots he had fired were messy, none of them accurate enough to suggest a marksman with any skill at all. So much so that the Triad thug, the bartender, was still gurgling on his own blood as he tried to catch his breath.

He had done his job right. The two men would look like they had been surprised by the women of the brothel, the first one jumped by the whole group and the second one dropped by clumsy gunshots as the women rushed out into the bar. An escape of opportunity as The Bratva attacked.

No evidence of The Green Arrow or a wider plot against them.

Just needed Kara to wipe the security footage for the ten minutes he had been there while she was in the backroom, and it would be taken care of.

A soft click from somewhere in the back of the room had Oliver turning on his heel. He had expected to see Kara, emerging victorious from the back rooms with all the data he would need to drop of to the SCPD. He wasn't entirely right.

Kara was there, but she looked far from victorious, and she wasn't alone.

There was a gun pressed to her temple, an arm wrapped threateningly around her shoulders, and the surprisingly imposing figure of the Triad's real headman at the brothel. The streak of slime Oliver had dealt with on his initial arrival there had only been a mouthpiece, someone with a suit and a smile who dealt with the customers. The man with Kara, that was the real man in charge.

"I should have fucking known it was you." Compressed Cantonese syllables, bitten out in anger.

Oliver said nothing, fingers itching with the need to reach for his quiver, to draw an arrow and put it through the man's throat. Unlike the others he had killed that night, Oliver could already imagine the satisfaction he would feel in doing it.

"Your little whore had us fooled for a while, she had some good tricks after all." The man dipped his head, planted a threatening kiss on Kara's other temple. She recoiled at the action but didn't fight against him, too much risk with the gun that close to her head.

For a fraction of a second, Oliver met Kara's gaze. It was all she needed.

Kara raised one stiletto clad heel and slammed the heel down hard into the man's foot. He yowled in pain, gun arm retreating far enough from Kara's head for Oliver to act. It took less than a second for him to draw back an arrow and fire it. Line of sight to the man's throat, where he really wanted to shoot, wasn't clean, Kara obstructed his vision.

Instead, he aimed for the gun. The weapon clattered across the room at the impact, and Oliver drew back his bow to fire again as the man regained his composure. Kara was in his way again, tensing up for the blow that seemed to be coming her way.

A knife drawn from somewhere, a glint against silvery metal in the gloom.

Kara redirected the attack with ruthless efficiency, just as Oliver had taught her. The attack had come in overhead, aiming to drive down hard into Kara's chest. She stepped back fractionally, two hands grabbing the wrist of the offending hand, and twisting back hard. The knife slammed into his chest, a faint squelch, and two sets of wide eyes.

It hadn't even been a conscious action for her.

More of him than Oliver was entirely willing to admit cheered at the sight.

Kara staggered backwards as the man collapsed to his knees, hands clutching at the hilt of the knife that was still buried in his chest. Her hands started trembling, still held halfway up.

A raspy breath got Oliver moving, though he wasn't sure which of them it came from.

The arrow was returned to his quiver by the time he reached them both and a solid kick to the shoulder sent the Triad boss hard onto his back. He was still alive, not that he would be for much longer. Oliver had taught Kara that move himself, perfect redirection of attack energy. The knife had gone in under the ribs, severed a few important veins and arteries, and punctured a lung. As he lay there, gasping for breath, the punctured lung would fill with blood. A few minutes, three at the outside.

He wouldn't last that long. Oliver pulled the knife back out, then drove it back in a different spot, repeated the action a dozen times. He had to make it look clumsy, same as the gunshots he had put into the bartender. Had to look like a murder of opportunity, of chaos. Kara's attack, fatal as it was, would have looked too clean.

When he was satisfied with his work, Oliver tossed the knife aside, and did his best to ignore the liquid warmth he could feel covering his gloved hand.

The gun and the stray arrow were next. The former clipped to his belt, and the later returned to his quiver.

Then, finally, he looked back to Kara. She hadn't moved an inch, still staring down at the fresh corpse on the floor. Oliver's first thought, the first words that came to him to offer her; I'm proud of you. If the look on Kara's face was anything to go by, that would finish her off.

She had almost taken her first life, would have done had Oliver not stepped in and finished him first, and she hadn't even thought about it. The hollowness of the first promise Oliver had made to himself when he took Kara in rang in his ears. He hadn't just taught her, he had conditioned her. Just like he had been, like all of his mentors had been, like every single one of his students before her.

"I didn't mean…"

"I know."

Author's Note: So, is this my favourite chapter? No. But it was never going to be after so long away.