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a well-rehearsed scene, often found plastered all over greyish static-full tv screens in shady motels all over the east coast. soap-opera actors trying to babble their way through the script, but it's a poor example of a thriller & they're not paid enough to make it believable. hence why there is no flirting with danger, no lethal charisma, only flat deliveries. all too similar to the unimpressed man standing in front of her, enumerating rights she gave up on by sitting in this room & idly smiling at the tainted glass behind which she imagines the whole team to be sitting, discussing and watching. like vultures on their branch, waiting for the lamb to fall to its dehydrated death. in the movie the list does not go on & on in the form of an insufferable enumeration, yet in reality ssa aaron hotchner seems very intent on losing precious time by standing there, a small folder in his hands.
his monotone voice only seems to falter (for a millisecond) when she leans slightly forward, perhaps because the girl's grin grows wilder. and that, of course, was not the desired effect. of course, ssa hotchner presence was meant to insufflate fear in her poor corpse, like an inflated doll. the problem with that scenario, though, is that they have nothing. if the fbi had enough to keep her from walking away freely, the scene would not be happening in an interrogation room but outside. camera, quick! focus on the police car driving away! in the backseat, hot breath on the glass window so that one finger can trace a little shaky heart in the condensation.
the issue with ishtar is that she always knows which script most people are playing, and she takes perverse pleasure in ruining it for everyone involved. hence the smile, how she is man-spreading on the metallic chair like she has power over whatever is happening there. not an ounce of fear in those baby blue eyes. fear has another name & she cut it out of her life with her teeth. kissed her goodbye with bloody lips. fear won't rise from the dead, and she certainly does not wear a fbi vest.
the silence stretches unevenly, until hotchner decides to simply leave the room. there is something amusing about it, of course, and if she were interested in the proceedings she would most certainly point out, outloud, his uneven stride (meaning: he got hurt not too long ago. or he is not as powerful and enigmatic as he thinks himself to be. or, who hurt ya, hotch? who lived to tell the tale, uh?) she would map out his body for places to strike, the way an artist watches a canva for the drawing to reveal itself to them. she would taunt him, one small fact at a time, until he is sitting back in that goddamn chair and staring down her soul, desperate to understand what makes her tick. sadly, ssa aaron hotchner is not ishtar's snack for the night & so she lets him go. she waves a little at him, saying goodbye in the most aggravating way, before going back to her initial position : before he stopped monologuing about the law & her supposed rights, she was already staring at the black tainted glass, a teasing smile upon cherry-pink lips.
"agent suarez", she singsongs once he has vacuated the room for too long, "you gonna watch all night? or yer plannin on joinin'?" a moment, just one, before her smile turns devilish and she's spreading her legs just a little wilder, "cause if yer just fixin' to watch, i can give ya a good show. free of charge."
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"aww, doc", cheek pressed against her knee, left leg against her chest & the other folded underneath her. she is pale as a shard of glass, sharp as one too. an illusion of a girl, a knife masquerading as a good time : she has always been that way. you would think that after months of custody, her criminal nature would blossom in horrid thorns all over her thin body; and yet the girl is as beautiful as ever. sweet & sunny as the first days of spring. even her smile, that goddamn winning grin, has yet to lose its light. it shines upon her lips, golden & full as a small sun. no matter the hours spent in that small cell of hers, she looks unfazed. she whines & screams & sings, if only to fill the silence with words of her own, but it is evident in her posture that fear has yet to slip itself inbetween muscle & bone. perhaps if they had had an actual file on her, they would have known that her childhood was a similar torture, made of closed windows & muffled screams. if they had had a file, perhaps they would have known better than to keep her alive. the death penalty would have been a safer choice, yes, she knows it & she hopes juno does too.
"are ya really worried 'bout me or are ya just makin' small talk?" she wonders, eyes as calculating as they have always been. it is complicated to account for the girl's truth : it seems that everything she says is a time bomb, meant to explode in your pocket the second you have forgotten its existence. sometimes the truth of it occupies your mind for years. sometimes, it is the inaccuracy that keeps you awake. either way, it is what she wants : her words plastered all over your skin in gashes of red. even her presence here is torture : paperwork fallen into juno suarez's lap & ishtar firmly waiting for the police on the day of the appointment, handcuffs already in hand. she had orchestrated her apparent downfall & the fbi had done nothing but sing / dance their part. that no one apart from juno suarez had ever dared to ask why the girl went so willingly... well, that was part of her game too.
"experience, uh? is that what we're callin' it now?" interest has yet to spark in her eyes. in fact, it seems she is seconds away from taking her legs & leaving the room. while he might be interested in showing her gruesome pictures of decadent murders, the dead have never been a big interest for ishtar. it is a common misconception about her, one she has no interest in squashing because someone that prefers concepts to real observations is someone meant to be fooled. but reid should know better : has he not been watching ? "come on, doc. say what ya wanna say. we ain't got all time in the world and this whole nice cop thin' you got goin' on? makes me bored." a smile that is more teeth than anything else, only for her to support her chin with her knee. "what do i get for helpin', anyway?"
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there are minimal charges against her, for only a quarter of her acts have been printed on white paper, pressed into a too-thin folder. they carry it around like a priest would his bible, yet these are irrelevent & profane scriptures : not much (if any) is accurate. ishtar came out of the womb aged nineteen, yes. they track her from cities to cities though her degrees, all obtained at an impossibly high speed that only spencer reid would find somewhat familiar. a phd in astrophysics, one in philosophy that she never published her thesis for. some papertrail exists between her & the multitude of jobs she undertook : uber driver to mall christmas elf, bartender to mail lady. it is exceedingly evident that all the fbi has on her are lists, facts piled into a poor excuse of a description. a figurestick of a woman, a profile that only belongs to her because she made it so. ishtar wonders, sometimes, if it eats them up, knowing that they only have her in custody because she did their job for them. most likely -- they never think of it, because it is easier to pretend that luck was on their side. except juno, yes, ishtar's juno, who keeps coming back, starved & wild-eyed. desperate for an explanation, the way a believer would walk away from god's light in order to find answers... the ones needed to explain the miracles away.
ishtar's story is one of mystery. the bodies she leaves behind (the ones you have attributed to her, at least. the ones you think are hers. the ones you want to be hers…) are not experimented on after death. most are not even tortured beyond the killing. a few, though, seem to be played with -- it took a few tries for garcia to find out that the unlucky ones were known or unknown offenders, violent husbands & vicious mothers. these ones, ishtar did not seem to find it in herself to care, so their death was a messy one ; so messy, in fact, that they hesitated a long time before attributing them to her. different m.o. different weapon different victimology. the only consistent part of her crimes were whatever crumbs she accepted to leave behind for juno to find.
that is why they accepted her offer, isn't it? she is an interesting creature, one too valuable to keep in the wild. one that must be put in a glass bowl, so that her every move can be observed as she exists in her semi-natural habitat. the fact that she watches them back does not seem to panic any of them. in return, she keeps a low-profile. the girl seems rather comfortable, buried under books & tv-shows, canvas & crayons. that was her only request : activities you usually force on old demented people as they wait for death. whatever game she is playing, no one seems to care. it's fine. they'll learn. juno has started to, already : too blinded by the conviction that ishtar is about to do something, she slips up & forgets to ask the right questions. meaning, whatever is in doctor reid's file is more important than whatever cataclysm ishtar is about to unleash. hence why it is him that stepped through the door, and not juno suarez. but it is fine. ishtar has nothing but time.
"babycheeks", she coos, the tips of her fingers pressed over the rim of the metallic table as she leans forward just enough to look straight into his eyes. her gaze is relentless & unnerving. if the game relies on composure, it is evident that she is the winning kind : whatever she does is whatever she willed into existence. even the slight smile at the corner of her lips, even the way she disregards completely his file and his pictures. "yer already playin' -- careful, all that impatience's gonna get ya losin'." perhaps the unfairest part of dealing with ishtar is that she sees you often more than you see her ; she is whatever you expect her to be. cruel, calculated and manipulative is what spencer reid wants from her so that he will not have to consider how eerily similar they both look under the same light. ishtar gives him what he ordered with a cheeky smile. juno wants her so full of playfulness & ingenuity she might explode from it. hotch wants her childlike & traumatized. gideon sees her as a failed experiment, a student he did not find in time so that he could add her to his little list of prodigies. ishtar keeps a list of all their desires & every day, at every visit, every time they demand it -- she plays her little spectacle, and she plays it so damn well they never see it fit to exchange notes. ishtar would call it sloppy work if she cared enough to do so.
"gotta get a book to darlin' june. do that & pinky promise i'll behave." here's another inconsistent detail that they have yet to put in her file, but that juno has come to understand : whenever ishtar promises, ishtar executes. how does one kill & manipulate one's way through life and still finds it in themselves to stay true to their word… that, too, is beyond understanding. similarly, she completely disregards the pictures. not even a surprise or curious gaze to betray any kind of interest. in fact, she seems more interested in keeping reid's eyes on her -- her gaze is unfaltering. the book is taken from under her seat & handed rather than put upon the carefully placed photographies. it's a small, old exemplary of brontë's wuthering heights. inside, words underlined, notes & doodles so obviously ishtar's only one look would suffice to determine the author. some quotes are buried under red ; another taunt, of course, for it is brontë who wrote of a deathless obsession. it does not matter that catherine perished or that heathcliff abandoned her to her demise -- both live, die & remain in each other's memory. hopefully, juno will find it disrespectfully appropriate for the little dance they are caught in at the moment. a word on making spencer reid part of the game? oh, elation perhaps. she knows a man who loses when she sees one : either he plays his part & willingly places ishtar back into juno's orbit. or he doesn't -- and whatever clue is lost between the paper pages will remain unread & misunderstood. even if he were to read it all thrice, he would not have the keys to understand it ; ishtar loves her puzzles, and she knows that juno's part of the game is well hidden in her own personal apartment, far away from her colleagues' inquiring gaze.
once the book has exchanged hands, the girl takes back her original position : chin on her knee, arms around her tibia. her eyes take a moment to look at the pictures. there is no sight of disgust, but that is to be expected. she has seen, done & felt much worse. still, it is a gruesome spectacle made of entrails & raw muscles. a scene of rage & despair that is so clumsy ishtar could tell you that person has never held a knife in their hands before that bloodbath. she knows that small, distraught stutter right before the kill. she buried it with naomi when it all began. she only looks at the pictures for a moment, as would a doctor if radiographies of a patient were shown to them. soon enough, though, her unsettling gaze fixates itself on the fbi agent once again. "hey doc, quick question. ya know how porn exposure gets men real messed up? even the good ones… 'specially the good ones." if the direction she is taking is rather unclear, she doesn't let reid time to wonder outloud. the fact that she is unfazed by the spectacle of bloody corpses is rather evident : constant exposure & disensibilization to the point of normalization. a killer knows what a killer does. "so, mh, when's the last time ya actually flinched?" there, the wolf smile, all white sharp teeth as she pushes one picture toward him -- (the worst one, all gore & horror wrapped into the tiny corpse of a girl who had yet to bleed on her own for the first time). the question remains unsaid, but settles heavily over the room : what is the difference between them, if not the disgust, if not the human urge to look away ? that one urge reid is lacking.
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old valyria clings to the young targaryen's flesh like a magnificent shawl ; it is no wonder her ancestors are hissing in protest at the seer's proximity. beware of the witch !! -- she is the black sun that rose to conquer the sky, only to alter the azure into an ocean of fire & blood. everything died so that she would feel appeased ; what blighted hope to realize grief still takes a seat at the table. perhaps the girl cannot see the richness of her past due to the chanting ghosts ; and yet! how fortunate she is to have a place to belong to. ishtar burned hers to the ground.
"do you not agree, child?" their breathing corpses look similar, if only in appearance : the long white hair of old age & the doll-like features that are graced by an amaranthine youthfulness. alas the sheer storm blue of ishtar's eyes crashes against the regal lavender of daenerys'. if the targaryen heir is an heroine of times past, the mythological proportion of her silhouette made obvious by the moonlight that settles over the soft features of her face… dhufeainnewedd is something else entirely. a creature of wind & mud, sorrow & thunder. for whatever august beauty the khaleesi exudes, the witch radiates unrelenting fury. severe lines of her face & not a pinch of pink on her snow-colored cheeks. scars of thunder from her brow ridge to her cheekbones tell a story of war & survival that her frail appearance would never disclose. daenerys' magic is a birth right ; her true home calls to her across the seas. dhufeainnewedd's magic was bitten into & kept inside her mouth until she could let it out : a scream to ruin empires.
"the iron throne!" a laugh strikes in dhufeainnewedd's throat, as would a thunder bolt. a moment later, in the midst of dark clouds of amusement, "it is but a seat. an uncomfortable one even. loyalty does not come with furniture." it does not come with words either, but lessons are not given freely. the khaleesi will learn ; she has blossomed against all odds. the gods' dices have been thrown & the numbers have been in the targaryen's favour. nevertheless, time is of the essence. "home has naught to do with power, your grace," the title a loose insult, an affectionate nickname in the form of facsimile respect. "to conflate the two is a dangerous game you are bound to lose."
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as the clock ticks & tocks, the girl's head lolls from one side to the other, dancing to the passing of time, amused & obviously enjoying the inner turmoil that she can smell even through the one-way glass. are they going to do it? yes, of course. if the wolf asks for a specific lamb, you give it the prey! after all, don't you want to know why it opens its maw so wide? don't you want to know why it never leaves enough of a carcass for you to pin it on it? nothing better than the main course to taunt it into showing its teeth. that they're so eager to send her the object of her obsession is amusing, to say the least. she would have thought they would try to protect her more. aaron hotchner knew the second he set his eyes on her that ishtar would not be the kind to babble the truth. so why cave to her demands?
ah, most certainly because juno said she would do it & one thing a father wants more than anything is that, when push comes to shove, his child is able to stand their ground in the middle of the storm. & so here she comes! juno suarez, still as delicious as she was a year ago. not that ishtar hasn't seen her since : she is meticulous in her affection, and would not dare letting june forget about her. but they have not known each other to be in the same room ever since last year's encounter. whatever tingle ishtar got from making herself known, it had to be through pieces of a puzzle & trinkets left behind. though, considering the pallor of juno's skin, she'd say the agent found most of her gifts without any issue.
"mmmmh, depends on wha' ya'd call better, love." her tongue rasps against the top of her palate before speaking again, as if giving juno time to feign whatever expression she wishes to. on the other hand, ishtar's body is completely nonchalant ; nothing fake about it either. no tension on her shoulders, no hesitation in the spreading of her legs. a girl pretty enough to savage, all there for the taking. "agent suarez!" there, not quite surprise but counterfeited dismay. "yunno they film these kinda things, right?" a grin, pretty & bright, "wouldn't want yer team to know what ya feel 'bout lil' old me."
if her voice has yet to admit how many hours she spent thinking about agent suarez, her eyes have no issue betraying her interest : they unravel her without shame. the lines of her legs. hips & waist. toned stomach, full breasts. the dip between her collar bones where ishtar knows she could easily dip her tongue if she got close enough to touch. throat, carotid artery pulsating with precious blood. sharp jaw, and of course her beautiful face, with lips that ishtar has yet to taste. she imagines it to be intoxicating, like strong liquor with some ice. the way your body shivers both because of the assault & the reprieve.
"thinkin' ain't exactly my thin'. could do some showin' ya, though. not that i'd keep it pg-18." her smirk is full of offense, shameless & disgraceful. whatever hell she came out of, it was one without social cues & society rules. what most people think normal or necessary, ishtar tramples. what she wants, she bites. what she hates, she destroys. what she loves… well. we have yet to discover what horrors she reserves for love. "have ya told 'em, june? 'bout how this ain't as disgustin' to ya as they think?" the face drops. no smile & only a flash of teeth as she bites into the agent's name. dead seriousness as she wonders out loud, as legs open just a little wider so she can lean forward just slightly enough to hover one finger on the seam line of juno's jeans. a murmur, "what were ya thinkin' 'bout, uh?"
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acting's all a game one has to play with oneself : gotta move fast or your brain will catch up with theories & thoughts you are not equipped to analyze. ishtar likes her thoughts bowlderized to their truest form, hence the chilling eyes & the sultry smiles. how desire can turn any human into a stammering mess who confuses right from left. the best way to describe it is that ishtar thinks with a purpose. she thinks in a fashion that is so cutthroat & ruthless that perhaps not thinking at all would bode better for those around her. "what's with tha obsession wit' goodness, 'nyway?" she wonders, her face suddenly turning toward abigail, the soft mattress of a girl's bedroom squeaking with her every move. "ain't like yer gonna get a prize for being a good lil' girl."
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the sorceress' smile is not an ugly sight ; despite the thunder scars around her icy gaze, she is a creature of beauty -- ethereal & eery, certainly, but splendid nonetheless. the ugliness hides in the curve of her smile rather than in her face, which is to say it is the intent that is foul. witch, do you not care that you are facing a destroyer of worlds? ishtar's smile seems to say, i too have eaten my fair share of universes. & the black sun would be right : whatever made dhufeainnewedd a threat to execute & a monster to exorcize, is what made cirilla a prize to conquer & a myth to control. (power)
❛ give me that. ❜ there's hardly an effort to suppress the snappy tone in ciri's voice while she glowers at ishtar. ❛ that's mine. ❜
so when ciri barks, ishtar smiles. all teeth & no tenderness. like a feral dog which has yet to understand that, when you play pretend, finger-play is forbidden. "i'll show you mine," she sing-songs, fingers tightening around the object, "if you show me yours." this is a game and either ciri jumps in or she gets played. there are not many ways to deal with dhufeainnewedd. ciri must know that : the stories are rarely exhausted. like breath on warm ashes, the fire is rekindled with barely more than a sight of the sorceress, simply existing ; the girl with hair white as snow, eyes like thunder & smile so mischievous it is often the last sight of the ill-fated. "here", she murmurs, extending an object of her own ; one that was nowhere near her body a second before, with the distant crack of thunder as sole warning of her magic use.
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"then what are you?" the question settles between them as would heavy clouds of rain in front of a blinding sun ; then, the snapping of a neck under a sturdy boot! the witch's face brightens, quick as a whip. "oh, i see. a puppet, with immemorial myths threaded into strings." there, she stands corrected. it is evident that she finds humor in daenery's candid pride. as the soothsayer of times revoked, she has met many like the girl she faces today ; all wore capes too big for their shoulders, and shadows of inheritance (at once gift & curse) took what was left of the space underneath. daenerys targaryen is no different. although ishtar is willing to believe in the girl's uniqueness, if only because whatever self-importance she has convinced herself of, it has bled into the threads of her fate.
whereas the sun caresses the dragons' mother's silhouette, it seems to completely avoid the witch's alabaster skin. one swims in sunshine while the other seems content to entice shadows. "a bold claim," she answers, and with that her tone seems to shift ; the syllables become old valyrian steel, lethal in their sharpness. how different to speak the language you have been birthed with, compared to all others. "and a bold programme." the oracle hums, as if contemplating whatever bodes in the horizon.
"the gods died long before you came upon this world," heresy is spoken with the voice of the erudite, one that has seen the truth rather than been told of it through fairytales. beware of the witch! for only the culprit can be said to have witnessed the corpse. "now you are alone in your quest." a truth that hides a lie, for the girl is a mother more than she is a child, and whatever she birthed is what ishtar lost when dragons danced & burnt themselves to ashes. whoever drew the ouroboros as a snake did not meet a targaryen in the flesh. that is not loneliness. loneliness is whatever space ishtar exists in. lost & never to be found. "what part do you wish me to play in your threatre?" a puppet without strings is just a doll ; but a doll who knows how to walk is a miracle, and dhufeainnewedd hopes daenerys will find a way to climb the steps that will take her to the damned throne. let her burn it to the ground. let her be whatever cataclysm ishtar was for the world she bit into & swallowed whole, as one bites into an apple. teeth first. apologies under the tongue, forgotten. "my loyalty means so little it cannot warrant such a meeting."
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a frown settles between her brows, heavy as a rain cloud on a clear sky. on the wooden chair of a deserted waiting room, she sits. knees drawn close and the sweaty palms of her hands pressed against her thighs. the first sign of a ghost haunting is the cold breath that escapes your mouth as if you had just smoked a cigarette. she remembers playing her way into adulthood, barely a child, breathing out all of the air available in her lungs so that she would look like the sophiscated french ladies on the tv. it used to bring her unadulterated joy, such an unfettered source of enjoyment. yet now, every time the condensation builds enough that it is visible, all the muscles in her body tense up.
words rest on her tongue, unmoving, and have done so ever since she laid eyes on his shifting silhouette. she cannot bring herself to push them out ; like a rat's nails on the metal bars of its cage, they squeak & squeal, and yet fail to be articulate enough so that they will be understood. you would think she'd be used to ghost stories by now, wouldn't you? everyone expects her to be. yet the taste of decay is still revolting, and for the major part of the last five minutes she has pretended not to hear or see him. bravery, it seems, always fails those who call for it.
"you're not supposed to be here." the accusation is soft as a feather, barely louder than a murmur. emerald eyes turn, only to capture his ; perhaps an attempt in making sure he is more than a mirage, hoping for a vision of a forthcoming death rather than the echo of one.
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old man seems tired & if solange were to be a more expressive creature, she would let a smile grow at the corner of her lips ; a wild flower, something sharp & biting, yet beautiful in ways only nature seems to achieve. however solange is the kind of animal that stays quiet until it goes for the kill, therefore his words get no physical response from her. not that he'd see it anyway. physical expressions are always for show & it is not one he'd be privy to, so she makes no effort whatsoever. her eyes flicker to the cane, as if gratted by the noise, only for the look to dissipite in idle boredom once again. apart from the healthy cherry-pink flush on her cheeks (most certainly the result of an expensive blush), she has all the attitude of a corpse. a flat-lining chest that barely goes up & down with each breath she takes. even those are slow, measured & seemingly far apart.
"sensitivity serves no purpose," even her voice has none of the mounts & valleys that most people associate with one's humanity. she talks like a chalk stick on a board, a forced effort for expression, yet not one done for pleasure. there is no the musical quality to her tone, no instruments behind the feminine intonation. just syllables strung together in an ugly garland. "i used to be, i suppose. youth makes fools of us all." how amusing, that she cannot have reached beyond thirty years & yet she is talking of age as if she had pockets full of decades. "i've learned, though." & there, in the straight-forward way she has of expressing it, it is easy to suppose that whenever people conflate sensitivity with feeling things deeply, it is because of people like solange, who, not a day in their life, have felt anything that actually hurted them. so when it happened for the first time, a sun ray on a cloudy storm day, when she went ballistic & destroyed all that was available for her wrecking hands, the audience aaaah-ed & ooh-ed. they thought, ah yes. such a sensitive girl. only she was not. an inexperienced one, yes, surprised that the beating heart in her chest would be capable of stuttering with sorrow. but not one who feels deeply. sometimes, it seems she is not capable of feeling anything at all.
"you're not what i pictured you to be." she ends up saying as she takes a step or two toward the right so he is no longer facing in the right direction. the sound of her high heels on the ground easily betray the movement, and it is evident she does not try to anyway. she observes him, eyes full of intent. "good for you, i suppose."
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she does not roll her eyes. perhaps if he had been able to perceive it, she would have wasted the energy for disdain ; alas there is nobody to witness such an expression, and she is not one to perform for no crowd. instead, she simply watches : as a shadow that appears to move closer through the heavy waters, she is silent & perfectly threatening in her stillness. how bizarre for a girl to stand so quiet, so still, when everything else around her is hurried & raucous.
youth is such a broad concept, one she supposes most people find to be a fault : our young ones know nothing, and must therefore be punished with our haughty expertise. solange finds it irritating, for a lack of a better word ; that someone ten years her senior might assume they know better than her because of something as trivial as a number… well, shortly put : it's ludicrous.
"or they do & make it everyone else's problem." salomé used to have a friend who fit this description : keira was a mess of a girl, too sensitive to properly survive in the world that birthed her. solange watched her perish oh so slowly, but death never quite seemed taken by her pretty, youthful face. instead, the grew to be a parasite : she would suck water from salomé's fingers. she would beg for money even when there was no money to be found. she would cry & cry until solange's ears would bleed, and then she'd ask for the twin sisters to fix her problems for her. as far as solange was concerned, a clean line drawn by a knife's sharp blade on keira's throat would have done wonders. yet salomé had always been more merciful than her sister, and so keira had continued, day & night, to pollute their life… until salomé's accident. after that, well, solange took care of the tumor. and keira died the same way she lived : loudly, feebly, pathetically.
this man, however, is nothing like the keiras of the world. the way he reacts to her movement tells her enough : some are eager to please. they turn like weathercocks & even find it in themselves to apologize for reacting a second too late. others prefer to remain in their exact position, a small rebellion against their interlocutor. if solange had to choose, she supposes she would be of the latter. there is something incredibly grating about abiding by someone else's rules.
the stranger is not one to fit into categories. his body remains in its exact position but his head follows the sound. half of him is part of the conversation & half remains where it was. almost a warning : his cane changes hands. a small, barely visible smile settles at the corner of the girl's lips. interesting.
"i assumed you'd be taller. white hair, perhaps, they did say you were old. less facial expressions." her voice is as even as the asphalt of a newly renovated road, listing facts as if she were reading her shopping list. if one were to push the metaphor, it could be said that her tone is as dry as the tarmac on a bright summer day. solange isn't one for metaphors, though. "but i suppose anyone introduced as a phantom made flesh is bound to refute expectations."
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reid’s biggest problem with profiling isil is that he has no interest in knowing more. boy wonder only sees the surface in which she swims easily, calls it lake & is done with it. but there drowns his analysis, for one cannot read a book that has yet to be opened. the story hasn’t unfolded, fingers haven’t cornered the pages, lines haven’t been caressed in horror or in awe. only juno seems to have caught glimpses of her, but these too were watered down by lust & spit. cool girl, pretty girl, ditzy girl. she is a good time with a game face that never turns off. when they go out, she is with them, she gets them the good table & the right kind of cocktail. she introduces them to the barman, even though she’s been in the city for less time than most of them. and once the party is going & bonds are being weaved, one drunk confession at a time, they fail to notice that the girl is already long gone. ditzy girl, pretty girl, cool girl. already swallowed up by the crowd, buried between bodies of faceless companions. she is oh so fickle, barely a girl, so terrified of being bound that she can be seen gnawing at the rope holding them all together. calls it a hanged man’s rope, when truly it is only a necklace, one that most call family.
perhaps if reid had paid more attention to the whispers that have been going around the office, he would known that belonging to a family is of no interest for the girl who saw her mother murder each and every member of her cursed tribe. families are easy wounds to probe & she is not keen on repeating the process. oh, she remembers : even as a child, she understood that bodies were sacrificed at the altar of a wicked god and that her mother would blame her for it. rossi told hotch early on ; that girl is something else. he took it as a warning for her personality. in truth, it had and still has more to do with her abilities : it is that same shapeshifting trick that got her out of the village. visage bleeding from rock-inflicted wounds, “i’ll draw the devil’s mark on ya. ugly ugly daughter o’ mine.” walking across the soil that saw her bleed twice ; once as a girl & once as a corpse. there, the child attempted to make a promise ; found ungodly ways to keep it. child became woman and found that sex tastes like love if you keep it sweet & short. woman found that less personality means less affection, and so she became it ; cool girl, pretty girl, ditzy girl. never the one you’d imagine at the altar, never the one you’d find to symbolize home. oh, what terrible choices did she make, just so she wouldn’t suffer the same loss twice. but even that was not enough, for malborne’s body found its way to a casket and ishtar discovered that grief still tasted the same way as it did all these years ago : muddy & acrid. the lord god formed the man of dust from the ground & breathed into his nostrils the breath of life – ishtar throwed up all that dirt on her way out of the cemetery and vowed to never endure the same enchantment again.
perhaps if reid had paid more attention, he would have realized that she wants to replace him even less that he himself wants her to. all she desires is to get her hands on them so that she can learn the angles & curves of their beings. an easy way to learn how to make clay dolls of her memories, so that wherever she goes next she won’t have to go alone. it is difficult to be a living corpse. one must fill oneself to the rim with moments. only heavy memories keep you tethered – and ditzy girls aren’t the kind to get heavy.
for the gift of her full attention, juno gets a toothy grin that curves around the pen. it is not rare for ishtar to suggest games ; riddles & dares that usually do not warrant any attention from the team. in quite the same manner as reid’s tangents, ishtar’s attempts at distraction tend to remain ignored. the few who play (penelope, derek, sometimes juno) usually get something for their gracious participation. be it files off their shoulders, gifts sent to their houses, or other gracious acts of service that remain anonymous, all is good as long as it gives them pleasure. her last deed was paying a month worth of penelope’s favorite treats & having them delivered to her house. the dare had been worth it : whatever she said in that phone got derek morgan so hot and bothered that he wasn't quick enough to avoid ishtar’s phone as she was taking pictures. with that kind of leverage on her phone, she was bound to get a few favours for the next month at least. so yes, ishtar was mischievous, but she was fair : and if juno was willing to play, then ishtar would make sure that there was something to win.
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