d2 ] Ivoire Blackmore \\ finished

i.

Perhaps she's waiting, the blond bombshell in strappy heels and rose-red dress, for someone to make their move. She sits as though she is, long legs languidly crossed, one sharp elbow perched atop the dirty table, a wineglass balanced between her index and middle finger. She swishes the red liquid inside around, coal-shaded lids half-closed over pale gray eyes following the swirl of what I think is wine. If she waits, she waits patiently.

I can only see her profile, the gentle slope of her nose and the double-bump of her lips - the upper lip thinner than its lower, fuller counterpart - and the soft lines of her jaw ending - from what I can see - where her dark blond hair spills over her skinny shoulders in large waves. Some of it is, at the moment, pulled back into a messy bun away from her eyes, but loose strands defied her hands to frame her squarish face. The long fingers of her free, singly gloved hand reach up to brush some of her hair away from her eyes, and my eyes pick up the ragged edges of her nails (she must bite or pick at them). That's when I notice the skilfully hidden tremor in her hand (I saw a slip, a crack in a mask I didn't realize was there).

She turns suddenly to meet the gaze of a slender boy with a silver bracelet, perhaps around her age, like predator does her prey. (I hear a collective gasp of shock - perhaps it's my own imagination, perhaps it's my own breath, but surely everyone sees the twist of an old scar on the other side of her face, the one she hid from us. Surely they see the way it slices an inch out and up from the corner of her mouth, twisted into a parody of a smile.) But the boy she's watching doesn't seem to notice; in fact, he seems drawn to her. The girl's eyes widen a little, faux-innocence in the light of them - but like the darker shade of gray ringed around her iris there's an edge to it, one I can't identify. Playful, angry, mocking... seductive? She seems to exude the kind of air that says, Come and play with me if you dare.

In a room full of careers, there is rarely anyone who doesn't.

The boy walks over and I watch as she leans back, feigning disinterest though her eyes challenge him to make his move and make it fast. He tries to recapture the attention she paid him before, eyes wide and earnest, his open and friendly face hopeful and sweet all at once. His hand reaches across the table and for a moment I think she's going to pull back with a derisive twist of her lips, a sneer of contempt, but she takes his hand, turning their hands over so her palm ghosts over his. She leans in close and I imagine she says, "Shall we play?" I watch as he smiles, she takes his hand, she sashays out the room with him in tow, slight hips swaying hypnotically in rhythm from side to side as she walks.

I follow.


ii.

It's dark where I hide, but through the slats of the metal grate I can see what's going on on the other side. There's blood - lots of it, almost as though the girl couldn't hold herself back any longer. She stalks the room, barefoot now, bloodied knife dangling from her still-gloved hand. A sweet smile stretches her lips as she surveys the too-still boy, looking like he can barely breathe with the rope holding his head back against the metal chair. "I thought you wanted to play," she says - ("What game are we going to play?" the boy asks, and she gives him a look over her shoulder, eyes sparkling - "My favorite kind," she says as she tugs him into a room and pulls him in for a long kiss.) - but I don't think this is what he had in mind. He's not awake to tell her that.

Ivoire - that's her name, she whispered it in his ear ("I want you awake when you die, just so my name can be the last thing you ever say - so you can remember and curse it because you know what you and I have done, what you've given me. And maybe I'll be the mother of your child.") - perches in his lap. His hands tighten a little into a fist - is it revulsion? (he's awake!) - and she laughs.

"Rise and shine, darling." It's like tracker-jacker poison injected into a sentence, the way the word slithers into his body and makes him squirm. His eyes reluctantly open, hateful, hazy and scared all at once. Ivoire strokes his cheek with the flat of her knife, leaving a thick stain. "I like you - you're different," Ivoire decides suddenly. "The others fight too much." Almost instinctively her hand reaches up to touch the single half of a Glasgow smile she was given (her face twists a little in distaste, disgust at her own scar). "I suppose that's why i've given you less than I usually give." One of her hands linger thoughtfully at the still-bleeding wounds.

Suddenly she pauses and smiles. "Do you want to know how I got this scar?" There's no reply, but she goes on anyway (her finger smoothing gently on the bag below one furious eye), "One of your friends fought too... hard when I wasn't expecting it. He managed to hold me down, but only for a little while... I killed him, in the end. He's here now, do you want to see?" Her head tips a little to the side, but her plaything doesn't take the bait, doesn't turn to see what she's talking about (I see trophies on the wall beside him - long ginger hair, a jar of... eyes (a chill runs down my spine), an assortment of things, parts dyed red. Ivoire kisses the tip of the boy's nose and whispers, "He's watching us, you know."

(I look at her trophies and I imagine previous victims, all of them stronger, larger than the willowy figure in the room, all of them dead or worse by her hands - and maybe the hands of her equally crazy family. But one of them must have hurt her so badly that she chooses people she can overpower easily, I think, the trophies showcasing different kinds of people - from thick appendages to slender, short boy hair to long girl ones.

How many people has she killed? I lose count after thirteen. Who taught her to kill?)

There's silence. My mind goes backwards, remembering the complexities of this girl (she waits hours, days for him to break but draws blood like she needs it - she plays at innocence, batting her lashes and smiling coyly at friends, family, then covers the eyes, ears, mouth of the boy and watches him be driven insane in the lack of everything - she defeats her brethren but cannot lift her own victims to their chairs.)

"Won't you beg?" she murmurs, her lips barely touching his. (She acts like their lover when she leaves more scars in her kisses than her knives. "It's the betrayal that hurts hardest.")

I see the tremor in the boy's arms and know what he's going to do before he does it.

He spits in her face and she jerks back, shocked, then abruptly angry. She goes away, out of sight for a moment, and returns with a length of rope, fashioned into a loose loop. She smiles at the boy. "I'm bored of our last game. How about a new one?" She runs her hand along the circumference of the noose, then drapes it most lovingly around his neck. Lowering herself to eye level, she presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. "I really like this game. Look, here are the rules - what you have to do is answer one simple question, and if it's wrong, I pull. Hard."

The boy pales abruptly at that. Her calculating gaze sees it - I see the way her smug expression grows just a little.

"Do you love me?"

He struggles, staring at her - I see the hate in his eyes, I see the confusion and uncertainty - does he lie, does he tell her the truth? What can he do to preserve his life? I imagine he's planning, steely resolve entering his gaze as he chases down the answers to both paths.

Then just as quickly he became determined, his expression falls. He'll never come out alive, and he knows it.

"No," he whispers and closes his eyes.

The girl studies the rope in her hand, then drops it to throw herself forwards, weight shoving the chair so it falls backwards. The thud of his head hitting the ground must hurt him, but there's nothing he can do or say before there's a cloth over his mouth and nose and she's pouring water on his face. He writhes, struggles - I can hear him gasping for breath, choking, and I burst out of my hiding spot to push her away.

She stumbles back but I fall over something (I look back and scream, thinking it's a corpse, a body of someone I once knew, but it's only a mannequin, fallen over), and Ivoire has time to gather herself. I'm still down when she straddles my waist, knife resting gently against my throat.

"So we have a voyeur in the room. Did you like what you saw?"

Her voice drops to a deliberate purr at the end and I struggle, I panic. "How can you do this to them? To any of them?" The words make no sense in the air but she understands, she laughs. She presses the knife harder against the skin of my throat and I whimper without thinking. (I think I hear the boy rasp out, beneath the soaking wet cloth still suffocating him, "Run," but it's probably just my imagination.) Ivoire strokes my cheek with her leather hand (it trembles like it's hurt, like it's weak). I shudder. I don't want to die. I should not have come here.

Just before she pulls the knife to end me, she says, "Didn't you hear? Our family has a heart made of stone."


iii.

Ivoire saunters out of her bathroom, freshly scrubbed. She wears her new silver bracelet, inlaid with gems she doesn't care are real or not (they shine, that's all that matters). "I have trash to get rid of," she tells her family casually, settling gracefully into her seat. "What's for dinner?"

She helps her siblings serve dinner, as she does every night since the day they placed her permanently into their lives, years and years ago. They could have hurt her, killed her, but they didn't and she appreciates it. She wants to be with the very best of them, she wants to make them proud. (She doesn't kill because she feels as though there's something she needs to prove with the Blackmores, she kills because that's what she's been taught to do.) She was only a street kid, after all. Only a street kid

Ivoire is a good sister, sometimes. One day maybe I'll help them steal something nice. Maybe for Christmas. It doesn't matter to her if they can afford it. Stealing is much more fun. (Stealing lives sates her desire sometimes.) But she'll only do it if Aragorn gives her the go.

(No one asks her if she got herself hurt again over dinner, and she doesn't tell them that a strange person burst in midway through the session. She's not thirteen and too weak to hold down a sixteen year old heavyweight male career - the one her brothers told her to stay away from, he's too strong for her - who told her that he wanted to see her smile from the very start. Who told her that she was on fire. She's not thirteen and ready to fall for the tricks of men. She's eighteen and powerful, even if in her own way.)

Maybe next week she'll see if she can sneak a visit to Mom.

Ivoire's a good daughter, too. Even if she isn't really a Blackmore.


iv.

She spends time watching herself in the mirror, remembering the way the struggles of her first kill weakened gradually until he could only stare at her and wait for his breaths to end. Ivoire's burnt hand strokes the edge of the scar on the same side of her body, and she smiles at herself in the mirror.

She can only remember the way he dies, because everything else is too painful.

(But it only matters when they die, because that's what they're meant to do. This is to make Mother proud, and Ivoire truly hopes that she's done enough to choose her own name.

In the end, she'll always choose Blackmore.)