`     you  know  how  to  whistle,  don't  you?

_{click for a summary}


triggers        conception implied   childhood illness   child death   neglect implied   abuse/manipulation implied   pregnancy   murder implied


the setupblood ties are only blood,   honey,   if you both defend the tether.    so what is a man and a woman and the fetus made by their tangle of sperm and egg?    parenthood by some uncouth standard;    indulgence by that heart-beating,   stem-cell hungry hand grabbing,   sacrifice one child to make the other whole.    a dismal outlook for a profound neglect,   rooted in the illness of the first daughter that necessitated the second.    her heart cells,   stem cells,   lung fragments,   liquid marrow poured hastily from the infant and synthesized into a healthy cardiovascular system.    it was a fringe science.    a physical,   ethical,   psychological nightmare performed by men without names,   not to be held responsible when the older daughter,   now age eight,   experiences her once-healthy body deteriorate,   cells turning napoleonic under rapid fire sepsis.    mara,   born out of medical need and raised out of bitter duty,   now watches from the doorway as her own heart,   lungs stop pumping and the one frayed thread of reason for her birth blinks out like a flushed,  frightened light.    man and woman have forgotten they loaned their sperm and egg to the lip-biting daughter,   the crying daughter,   and they do not care to remember.    the creature left behind is fed,   clothed,   groomed,   and educated.    she is not loved.    damp love rots inside her.she is married at eighteen to a man who says her name out loud.    who looks at her,   touches the skin of her lower lip,   commands her body as his own.    it feels like a safety she has to reach into her early years of bleary,   half-lit childhood to recall;    she hungers for it,   for him,   and does not argue as he reorganizes her atoms into a beautiful,   docile thing that fits in the palm of his hand.    malachy is well-educated,   boisterous,   and his name   —   now hers   —   commands the unrivaled respect of chicagoans.    byrne is the name taken by american o'byrne descendants,   who have has held the state's politics,   finances,   and criminal activity in its teeth since their emigration from ireland in the early eighteen hundreds.    by thirty-five,   malachy has assumed leadership of the o'byrne family mob,   and mara,   a tempered and warm twenty-two,   becomes den mother.    learns to wrangle wolves,   serpents,   boys,   sloths,   octopii and their many hands.    she does not know peace,   but her heedless heard uncovers the unfamiliar,   sweetly satisfying taste of family.malachy wins the mayoral race in twenty thirty-eight,   and his daughter is born eleven months later.    mara named her   —   a delicate name,   sharp,   meaning freedom.    her name has been lost and will not be found.

the conflictthere's a simplicity to this motherhood,   an art lost on the girl who was born without one.    it did not and does not come naturally,   but it does come,   delicate and sharp,   like a knife edge.    mara is twenty-three,   pregnant,  her once-naïve eye and sense whetted into percipience.    empathy.    anger.    she sees for the first time this plush endlessness of souls rife for threats,   coercion,   killing,   cold gaze turned on and away from those faceless subjects who are born or beg their way under the wheels of this lead-cased train and the irishmen who run it.    the fungible fathers and mothers,   sisters with sisters,   playing cards shuffled between fingers and laid out on the table in flushes.    there are no winners.    there are only,   as far as mara can see,   those with guns and those with gun wounds,  those buried in the nameless earth for the sake of o'byrne sovereignty.   motherhood as a pride is Delphic,   terrifying.     but suddenly,   nauseatingly,  motherhood as a duty overwhelms her.    this is not the world she will bear her child into.but it is a self-mutilating,   venemous hyrdra of a world that has survived centuries of beheadings and crucifixions,   and it will not bend under her thumb alone.    the pinnacle of violent stewardship,   this monster needs its burr-and-garrote heart removed from the body,   and her unpracticed surgeon's fingers learn as they go.    using long-dead history as her guide,   employing the good faith manipulation she's mastered as a mob wife and den mother,   she systematically turns brother against brother,  mob against mob,   poisons and coerces and spoils the hibernus shell that coats the peace of their violence.when they leave for sri lanka not quite two years later,   her child eight months old and locked on her hip,   her uncharacteristic,   close-mouthed behavior has not gone unnoticed by malachy.    but his suspicion,   just like the exploded fragments of his hired helicopter,   are incinerated and tumble to the ocean floor somewhere north of the maldives.    the wreckage is never found,   but the names of malachy,   marala, and [redacted] are on the passenger list   —   all presumed dead.    malachy,  the forerunner for the chicago senatorial race,  is briefly mourned on news casts;    his wife and child are honored by other mothers and children with candles,   flowers,   plush animals on the steps of their chicago brownstone.

the resolutionthere is a haze surrounding the events that follow.    we know that mara charters a plane from the maldives to miami under the name "sarah."    a name is rotten-sweet with the implications of her sister.    mara connects with a mercy agent,   aristotle,   and discusses her future and its indisputable terms and conditions   —   most excruciatingly,   their insistence that she cannot,   as a junior agent,   maintain guardianship of a child.    we know that while in the swamplands of mississippi,   there is radio silence for seventeen days while mara grapples with her options.    cradles,   soothes,   bathes her child who had just turned a year old.    still young enough to forget her,   if mara gives her the chance.    a child who should live a life untouched by the mess her mother has made,   clean from the blood of men she was always going to and will continue to spill.    selfishness clings to her skin like a thick,   unrelenting humidity.    but is a mother still a mother when she's left her child in another woman's hands?    when her child is stripped of her name,   heritage,   roots,   and borne into an earth her mother will never know?we know that in denver,   colorado,   the child changes hands and is driven southwest.    we know that mara and aristotle drive northwest,   toward some penultimate future characterized by nothing mara has ever known.

bonus: the denouementgrowth inside mercy is turbulent   —   emotionally,   physically,  intellectually.    she,   unlike most of her training class,   has no first-hand experience with oblique violence.    she will struggle for years before it becomes second nature,   albeit never a pleasant nature to host.    strange that she should be better with a knife than a gun;    something about the honor of such a closeness to a wound,   to death at her hand.    her physicality improves,   agility and stamina surpassing her peers as though out of desperation,   a primal,   aching need to prove her value to this that she has given so much for.    yet,   even nine years later,   that womb softness,   those silvery proofbare threads crawling up her stomach,   have not faded.    she does not wish them to.today,   mara's strengths lie in the up close and personal attack on the mind,   the senses.    manipulation and coercion,   candy and tenuousness,   swift violence and long-winded poison.    she is not the assassin who wears blood stains like a marker of prestige,   who relishes in the oblique taunting and taking of lives.    she works hard,   works on experience and instinct,   and in fact rarely sees the need for blood letting.    death is another thing altogether.    men must,   as a matter of nature,   die   —   she does not wrest with the complications of taking the mortal life of a man who has already been living a moral death.not usually.    when unrest does come,   it is delicate and sharp,   like a knife edge.    it means very little to anyone outside of her own head.    that silken spiderweb of a fine line between the work of the o'byrne family and that of mercy organization does not evade her,   that "good" work of one and that "necessary" work of the other.    it doesn't matter which is which.    that's all comes down to who pulls the strings,   doesn't it?    despite that hard-triggered disillusionment,   mara is a loyal creature,   still desperate to prove her worth to the hands that took away her second life's purpose   —   and who ostensibly still hold that purpose in the balance.    her daughter,   as of last november,   is ten years old.    she has her mother's eyes.

HEADCANONS

triggers        smoking


one⸻although unfamiliar with combat and weaponry until her recruitment at age twenty-five,   in the last nine years mara has become proficient with:   close-range knife work,   knife throwing,   boxing,   judo,   coercion and manipulation,   peak human stamina,   marksmanship and sharp-shooting  (  reluctantly  ),   information gathering   restraints,   breath work,   pick-pocketing,   misdirection,   poison tolerance  (  mithridatism  ),   and resilience.two⸻mara works primarily in close range to her targets,   specialized in working undercover,   infiltration,   coercion,   and amassing large amounts of data,   literal and perceived.    her memory,   therefore,   is excellent.three⸻mara gave up smoking shortly after joining mercy.    i should say she is still giving up smoking,   stubbornly committing to the schtick for months only for an inside gig with an organized crime syndicate to spoil her efforts.four⸻she may be canny,   but mara's faultless empathy for the disenfranchised and unheard can overwhelm her sense.    most sticky situations she's found herself in are the result of weighing care over caution.five⸻mara's father owed debts to the o'byrne mob,   a result of money loaned for the construction of a new cardiovascular system for his oldest daughter,   sahana,   mara's older sister.    this debt was considered paid when malachy and mara married in 2033.six⸻the construction of sahana's new cardiovascular system required a near identical biological copy.    mara's biology was painstakingly edited and spliced together,   and was ultimately born a near-copy of her sister.seven⸻mara's agent name,   sunday,   was borne by first appearances at mercy.    she was stoic,  polite,  stiff,  and overdressed for the first several weeks of her induction and training as a junior agent.    it was used pejoratively then but has since become a testament to her persistently light-hearted,   sunny demeanor.eight⸻the name "sarah," given randomly by a passport scalper in the maldives, remains her preferred name to use when undercover.    its association with her sister,   the bitter but real reason for mara's existence,   is palpably raw and roots her to her reasons for doing this work.nine⸻because of her deeply integrated social presence in chicago,   as well as malachy's public career in local politics,   mara is prohibited from going to chicago under any circumstances,   personal or occupational.    the chances of her being recognized are too high to risk.

with     ALISTAIR    —    event
owe   as of   6 aprilwith     WARDEN    —    event
owe   as of   8 aprilwith     SINÉAD    —    event
owe   as of   9 aprilwith     JORDAN    —    event
replied   as of   7 aprilwith     SABINE    —    event
replied   as of   4 aprilwith     EDITA    —    event
replied   as of   6 aprilwith     IMARA    —    event
replied   as of   6 april_________________________________________with     ALISTAIR
owe   as of   27 marwith     ADAIR
owe   as of   31 marwith     SABINE
replied   as of   28 marwith     YEJIDE
replied   as of   26 mar

triggers        detail   detail   detail   detail

mara was born made of spare parts.    her sister's dna was painstakingly tbd

progress check:      status


inciting  incident⸻tbdrising  action⸻tbdpre-midpoint⸻tbdmidpoint⸻tbdpost-midpoint⸻tbddark night of the soul⸻tbdclimax⸻tbdresolution⸻tbd