tl;dr: dissatisfied with future spy prospects, thalia becomes a hitman for hire, but fulfills none of her contracts, instead, murdering who she thinks deserves it. acting god is a tough pursuit, and soon, she finds herself with more hits on her than she can keep up with. sensing something ominous, she cashes in her friendship favour with seb and asks him to wait for her while she goes in. greeted by her father, who shoots her upon sight, it takes several moments to realize she’s got the upper hand and his intention is not to kill her. his life relies on her death, any sort. left with an envelope of documents that secures her with a new identity, she lets him live by faking her own death. tw: violence, death, murder.
suggested listening : dissociation by timber timbre
her second year was formative, transformative only in retrospect — coming into herself, adding shadows to a figure that remained an outline for so long. she doesn’t know it then, her unbridled fear of her father is a chronic ache, where the symptoms can only be subdued by obedience. he’ll never tell her what he wants, from her, of her — if she did, she’d do it in a heartbeat. instead, she tries every salve, grades that’ll grow into job offers, a bulletproof arrogance that grows into a threat against her father : the threat that she doesn’t need him ( she does ). a distaste for authority fosters in the place of love, and she thinks about the man-made book, the power of an individual. she thinks about how rules are so easily manipulated by emotion, finding herself far more impressed by the disregard to rule shown by the gallagher students who broke the caledonia students out than her own assignment, herding them back with only a grade as her impetus.
dad signs her out a day before graduation. her absence from the ceremony doesn’t cause a stir, she’s well on her way to nothingness. her patience is not rewarded when she stares at the rearview mirror, waiting for him to glance at it and see her, not out of choice, but safety when changing lanes. he uses his side mirror. ‘ i have interviews. ’ she broaches on the plane, when it’s already too late — she figures he already knows and if he’d wanted her to attend them she wouldn’t be crossing the atlantic. she spends an entire summer waiting for him. the doors aren’t locked but she’s housetrained. and one day she leaves, and he doesn’t follow. she’s well on her way.
a dead-eyed gaze falls on the man leaning over to peer through the half rolled down window. she’s enlightened, if he shoots she’ll pinch the bullet between her fingertips. ‘ been waiting a long time for you. he got you locked up in there ? ’ she shrugs in response. ‘ the illusive daughter. got quite the price on you. ’ if he was going to kill her he would have done so already, villains have speeches — murderers have guns, and this guy hasn’t shut up. ‘ sure. ’ she concedes, tugging on the locked door, head cocked with impatience. can’t find the niceties in her to revel in his confusion, when it’s keeping her from her life. ‘ i’ll work for you. ’ thalia hall cares so little about the state of her affairs that she falls asleep on the road to nowhere. her slumber is dreamless and she wakes up feeling refreshed.
her life becomes a wash of blurred vignettes, she’s only ever caught in motion and the camera can’t focus. the only time she stills is when she’s making up her mind as to whether the victim of a contract deserves death — it’s a clinical ordeal, clerical even, thumbing through the pages with a pensive, far off gaze, deciding a future for strangers she’s never met, deciding it by their actions alone. none of this is protocol, but what’s the point in cozying up to rule ? the man who had hired her could have just as easily killed her, and their alliance is arbitrary, so when she ‘goes rogue’ ( which is a generous term considering she had never given any indication of being loyal to begin with ), she kills with the poor motive of self-defence. after that, time lapses — she abides by catnaps and can’t catch a sunset without the haze of fatigued eyes, paranoia spiked adrenaline, enough caffeine to send her into cardiac arrest, a lit fuse she can’t put out.
dad appears like the light at the end of a tunnel. there is a finality to this. and she is at peace. in some ways she knew it would end like this, just as how she knows iphigenia’s fate was not sealed in the moment agamemnon decided to sacrifice her but instead the moment aeschylus was born. there is no decision in her life that led to this moment other than the simple blessing of entering life.
‘ are you going to kill me ? ’
‘ are you going to kill me ? ’
a flash of confusion appears on her face, she’s always been the pawn but she feels the gut wrenching pull up the board. checkmate. he’s not going to kill her — but she can kill him without pulling the trigger. going to — future tense. if he was never going to fulfill his contract, he’s already dead. thalia hall is either speaking to her father’s ghost, or he knows that he is going to fulfill it. with her help. in the time it takes to parse this information, he has his arms around her, his affection has always acted as a straitjacket but she mistakes them as his hugs, and it feels nice. secure, swaddled by a tight blanket. so she sobs, piercing wails that would rival a newborn, because she’s not sure how it ended up like this and if only he’d tried, even just a little, it wouldn’t be like this. she hates him. she hates him so much. when her cries let up to take a breath, he interjects.
‘ another life. go on now. i’ll see you in the one after. ’ in the years looking back, her belief as to whether it was a threat or a consolation will ebb and flow. she’ll squeeze her eyes shut and study the feeling, of how he pressed the passport against the wound he inflicted, then remember the tenderness with which he kissed the top of her head. her freedom indebted. she should have let him die but she loves him. maybe in the next one he’ll be kinder. or she’ll be crueller. part of her wants to release the pressure that her palm holds and find out now. thalia hall survives out of spite.
and because of sebastian. who she’s always likened to a dog, and she can’t leave him there, waiting dumbly in an idling car. not when she can’t remember if she left the window open. she does her best not to let her knees buckle before she clambers into the passenger side of his car, her head pressed against the rest trying to mute the throb that feels like someone’s punching her skull from the inside out, both hands pressed above her hip, closed eyes. ‘ you wanna go back to yours ? i’ll take my clothes off for you. ’ the joke slips from her with an uncanny ease, like she’s forgotten how to be. he stitches her back together again, and she leaves without saying goodbye because she’ll see him in the next one. thalia wipes down the cover of her bloodstained passport in the stall of a public toilet, a stuttered breath as her eyes trail over her new name, her new place of birth, her new country of citizenship — not inhabiting someone new, but returning to the old, what was once forgotten. stepping into a shadow that was one pace behind her, waiting for her to come home. her life was never sustainable, but maybe this one could be. she’ll tend to her roots with a gentle hand, and start a garden.
