#ilsa faust || memories

[etxrnaleclipse]

Ilsa Faust

Fandom: Mission Impossible

Occupation: MI6 Agent

[vindemiatrixgrant]

Yellow silk mingled with white cashmere and dust on the varnished wooden parquet. The walls absorbed spicy odours akin to a famous Indian spice or burning trees in Southern California; they absorbed the brilliance of dawn, fleeting but lingering in the memory like the whole of this small world contained in six surfaces. Electrified hair stretched towards the sky as the hairs on their arms and legs moved with goosebumps. Her mouth held the taste of whiskey and Ilsa Faust, covered by the cool glass water from the bedside table, moans and sighs, accumulated and escaped with a sharp jolt of air, scattering like beads across the sheet that accumulated so much heat under her bare shoulder blades that Alanna felt like she was on fire. She was burning from the heat between her skin and linen, between the back of her head and her hair, between her knees that spread the murderer's hands. Mingled in the stuffiness of the room, in the smoke of burning nature, they were women. Women at last, not women of power, not allies or enemies, but human beings. Amidst crying children and dying parents, amidst the wax of church candles and the tracks of cocaine, amidst the nuclear blast and the petite mort. They. Were. Human.

[princesssarcastia]

in this land of milk and honey, we're too shy to say we're thirsty

here, have 1.5k of fic i just wrote about mission: impossible: rogue nation.  AU of the scene where Ethan Hunt wakes up a captive of the Syndicate, where Ilsa Faust gets to run the interrogation the way she wants to, instead of being interrupted by the Bone Doctor.  title from “Little Mercy,” by Doomtree. read it on ao3 here.

“What Vinter and the rest of his stupid ilk never realize is that torture doesn’t work, especially on their own kind.  Pain is cheap.”

-

Ilsa grabs her tools by rote memory, uninterested in taking any care in the work she’s about to do. This isn’t the first time she’s worked someone over for Lane, and it won’t be the last time; she needs to stay numb to it, numb here in the moment and numb after his latest acquisition bends and twists, numb when she has to stand there in the aftermath as the others move in to take what they want from him, numb to the part of her that wants to perk up at the praise following a job well done.

The door groans under its own weight when the guards push it open for her, and she sees the man tense ever so slightly where he’s tied to the post.  Conscious, then, but not quite awake.  Her heels click in the silence after the door slams shut. 

She leaves the lights off; the shadows help, sometimes, with some agents.  Paired with the right kind of drugs, the right kind of touch, darkness can add a dreamlike quality to an already intimate process.  People like them feel safer in the dark.

This one is dangerous. Lane wouldn’t take such a personal interest if he wasn’t.  So, she slips off her shoes, sets them on the table with her tray and her jacket, unbuttons the top button of her shirt and rolls up her sleeves.

Ilsa turns around and—

He’s awake now.

He’s staring at her.

She stares right back.

The moment yawns and stretches between them, arching languidly.  Ilsa breathes in sharply, quietly, and takes a step toward him, still caught on his eyes—although the rest of him is hardly a chore to examine. 

He doesn’t move, focused intently on her.  Assessing. Calculating.  It feels—it feels a little like when Lane looks at her, like he’s cataloguing her expressions and picking apart the things that make her tick.  But it doesn’t make her want to curl up and hide when this man does it. 

“Nice shoes.”

Ilsa blinks, then quirks her brow, amused.  That’s a new one.  

“American intelligence, yes?”  A soft opener. 

He tilts his head, silent, but clearly not buying that she doesn’t already know.

“But not the CIA,” she continues, moving closer in even steps.  “No, you have too much personality for that, I can already tell.”

Now he’s amused, letting his lips twitch, but he keeps his silence.  She starts turning his reactions in her mind, letting her gaze fall over the whole of him to catch them all.  This one is a talker; she just needs to get him started.  And stop getting distracted by his eyes.  There’s something about them that draws her attention, but Ilsa can’t figure out what.

“How long have you worked for the IMF?”  She stops well outside of his reach but still close enough to see his chest rise and fall minutely with each breath.  If she focuses, she imagines she might be able to see it twitch with the beating of his heart.

“How long did you work for British intelligence, before you turned traitor?”  He fires back.  Right on the money.  Not that it’s a difficult guess, given where he is and how she speaks.

“Twenty years,” she says calmly, and watches him mentally turn on a dime, reassessing.  “They recruited me right of secondary school. I imagine it was much the same for you. Sometimes, they catch people later, but MI6 knows how to recognize a good asset in the making fairly early.”

Ilsa takes a step closer. “The agency was my whole life.  It consumed all my time and energy.  My waking hours and my sleeping ones.  And I was…eager to please.  An excellent agent, willing and capable of doing anything they asked of me.  It was hard, sometimes, but in the end it was worth it because I knew everything I was doing was for queen and country.  The greater good,” she adds, letting her mouth twist wryly. 

He watches her for a moment, and she lets him, lets the silence sit, lets it build.  It’s an obvious enough cue, and he’s curious enough now to take the bait.  He wants her talking as much as she wants him talking, neither of them in control nor sure they have the upper hand, yet. 

“What changed,” he asks finally, and Ilsa’s gaze catches on his eyes again.

“I woke up,” Ilsa takes three steps to her left, changing the angle of approach.  “I realized, one day, that I only thought I was fighting for the right side because it’s what I chose to believe.  None of my experiences actually supported that conclusion.

“Have you ever killed an innocent person, Ethan?”  She doesn’t wait for his answer.  “I know I have.  On accident, sure, as an unintended casualty of my mission; but on purpose, too.  Sometimes it was the mission.  To make things easier for MI6, for my handler, for England.  For their convenience.”

Now he shifts, the cuffs on his wrists and ankles clinking.  He doesn’t respond, but she can see it in his eyes.  He has.  Of course he has.  No one in their line of work hasn’t. 

That fact of life actually bothers him, unlike Lane and the rest of the men here.  The same way it bothers her when she forgets to be numb.

She knows what it is in his eyes, now, that’s pulling at her attention. 

His eyes are kind.  He looks kind. 

It’s impossible. 

“I realized I was only loyal to them because of a lie I was telling myself.  And that loyalty certainly wasn’t returned.  The agency doesn’t exist to care for its agents, it exists to use them up until there’s nothing left.  How many times did they leave me out in the cold, dangling in the wind, to survive or die under nothing more than my own ability?”

“That’s the job,” he says, with a hint of condescension.  It grates.  He probably means it to.

“That doesn’t make it right, the way they treated me.  The way your government treats you.”  

His eyes shift.  He knows her game, now, has mapped out the path she wants to take, the weak spots she’s aiming for.  The muscles in his limbs tense and relax minutely, imbued with the strength of surety, surety that what she’s trying to do won’t work. 

But his faith in himself is misplaced, because now she can tell he hasn’t realized yet that what she’s saying is true.  He’s like her, two, five years ago: unable to value his own life.  What his handlers do to him doesn’t matter because he doesn’t matter; you can’t hurt someone if they don’t see themselves as person capable of being hurt.  It’s fine if they use you because you’re letting them.  You’re a tool; if you’re not being used, then what’s the point of you?

The truth is, it does matter.  It does hurt them.  And they only let themselves be used because the right people broke them at the right time, cracking them wide open to let someone else in to twist them into knots.

Truth will out.  It’s more powerful than people like them, steeped in lies and deception, ever expect, which is why Ilsa is so fond of using it.

Faster than the eye can properly see, she lunges for him, sinking her needle into the meat of his bicep and depressing the plunger.  Too quick for him to stop, although he pulls his legs up to kick her in the chest and send her sprawling.

Truth will out.  But of course, the drugs help. 

His kind eyes blink rapidly, then slowly, clearly tensing to try and fend off unconsciousness that isn’t coming.  Oh, it won’t knock him out.  Unconscious is no use to her.  But it’ll ease the way for the truth; make him more pliant, more sociable, more open to suggestion. 

What Vinter and the rest of his stupid ilk never realize is that torture doesn’t work, especially on their own kind.  Pain is cheap.  Their bodies are disposable, their lives are disposable.  Ethan Hunt would happily die for the IMF, for the greater good, probably even for his fellow agents.  He’s a fighter, this one.  He’ll die before they break him. 

But if Ilsa can lay the truth of their lives out in front of him in ways he can understand, it will plant seeds of doubt his lived experiences can’t help but nurture.  Doubt is more dangerous than pain.  

Ethan Hunt and his kind eyes will never work for Solomon Lane, not after Lane shot that poor woman in the head in front of him.  Not after Lane made him feel helpless—and she’s sure Lane did, it’s his favorite way to make people feel, and he’s spectacularly good at it.  

She just needs to make sure Ethan doesn’t work against them.  Finding the ways his handlers have made him feel helpless is a good place to start.

Ilsa waits for his pupils to blow wide and his pulse to slow in his chest and neck before she starts. She stays where he put her on the floor, only shifting enough to sit up.

“How long have you worked for the IMF, Ethan?”  She asks softly.

One breath.  Two breaths.  He blinks again, licks his lips.  

 And tells her.

[darke15]

Howdy Lady,

You scare me with these #references

I saw a lot of 007 of MI, and now the Punisher gifs.

Just references research or some of your favs movies? Genuinely wondering what movies and tv series are your faves lol

Hello there!

It's a little bit of both.

I love the Mission Impossible movies (except #2. #2 is garbage) and the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, I've watched them a lotta times and I've drawn a lotta inspiration from them.

There's a actually a couple scenes, one from Quantum of Solace and the other from Rogue Nation, that I drew direct inspiration for Trigger Finger in order to get the right feel for the museum...

Generally, #references is something I'm drawing inspo from. I've never actually seen the Punisher series...but the gifs gave me a vibe that I wanted to remember, same with gifs from CACW. And since I have the memory of a goldfish with amnesia, I had to reblog it.

I don't actually watch a lotta TV series, I dunno why but I don't have the patience for them...which is weird. But I've got a lotta fave movies (a lotta which I draw inspo from) including:

Get ready for an essay cuz I live and breathe action movies...

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The John Wick trilogy

the fight scene choreography is ah-ma-zing and I love and appreciate the amount of work Keanu Reeves put into making it feel real, with accurate reloads and consequences

Another thing I love about John Wick is the notoriety he already has as we enter his world. You mentioned his name to another character and they know who they're dealing with. (Ghost inspo anyone?)

Atomic Blonde

a lot of Boone inspiration actually came from Charlize Theron. Tall, kicks ass, uses of disguises, changing accents...etc

Mission: Impossible

Honestly, not a huge Tom Cruise fan...but I love Ethan Hunt and the dynamic of the team in the later movies. Big Duke inspo and, in the later movies, Boone inspo with Ilsa Faust. Like I said, not a big fan of #2 bit I love the rest of them.

James Bond

I have seen every single James Bond movie from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig and Daniel Craig is my fave Bond.

There's a more cohesive story that latest Bond films bring in comparison to the early Bonds and they make him more of a complex character than we see in the early movies and I love it.

Hobbs & Shaw

Big inspo for The Soldier and The Spy, especially in the form of Boone and Duke's early relationship.

GI Joe

Listen, I know it's not everybody's fave iteration of GI Joe but I still love it. Duke Hauser is obvs a big inspo for Duke. Snake Eyes' suit is big inspo for Ghost's suit. The Pit is big inspo for the Olympus Base. Big inspo all around.

The Big Sleep, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon

Anything with Bogie and Bacall, I am here for. No inspiration here, just something to help me relax if I'm having a bad day.

Finally, the biggest inspiration of them all and one of my favorite movies:

The A-Team

The movie that started it all, along with CATWS and CACW. I love the team dynamic and how they work together when they actually have a plan. The humor, the overall badassery... everything. I love it. Alpha 1 is directly inspired from this team, Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith is who I see as Weston.

┕━━━━━━━━━━━ ★ ━━━━━━━━━━━┙

End essay nobody asked for.

The only TV series I've been able to make it through is WandaVision, TFATWS, and Loki...so they're probably my faves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ofmusingsxandmayhem-a]

[ofmusingsxandmayhem-a]

[ofmusingsxandmayhem-a]

[ofmusingsxandmayhem-a]