This/Hunters song
This is a story about a character. She goes through life like any other, passing from stage to stage and going, in the grand scheme of things, generally unnoticed. She has never been all that comfortable with people, but she is smart and very good at remembering, so most also never realise it. Most, in fact, would think she's a natural, a real social butterfly, even, but such is simply part of the trade.
She is an artist, specialising in character and graphic design, and also forgeries. She hadn't expected this last one, of course, but a college education, even in the fine arts, can lead to meeting some rather interesting people, and when a friend of a friend asked if she could replicate something, she didn't see why not, especially since she really needed the money. So one thing led to another and her skill with a brush and practiced sociality brought her here, to the heart of an underworld of thieves and scam artists.
And life was good. People pay good money for a baked painting, because for those with the graces to pass one off as the real thing, they were very valuable indeed. The risk was on them, too, so she was generally safe, living well behind the cover of her design firm and away from any who would connect the pieces to her even if they were recognised. But good forgeries don't get recognised. That is sort of the entire point of forgery, despite the fact that an artist, in her heart of hearts, above all else wants recognition. She wants people to see her work for what it is, and to be able to remark on it, and most of all, to not attribute it to someone else. She wants credit.
And then she got that credit. Someone recognised one, for one reason or another, and tracked down the source - her. It just wasn't the sort of credit that anyone wants to get.
On sundays, the Corens got together for a round of games, tea, and chatter. It was their little ritual amidst the madness of the week that held them fast as a family even as they all went their separate ways - Mum working toward retirement, little brother Alex studying to be an engineer, and Lilya with her design company and all the other less known aspects of her life. Their father had died in an accident when Lilya was eight, Alex only two. They never spoke of it.
Then Lilya one day found herself standing in her family's living room, surrounded by blood, and faced by a pair of bodies that would be unidentifiable to anyone but a child and sibling.
One had been her mother. The head was basically missing, but it had definitely been her mother. And the other her little brother, who she had practically raised herself while their mother had been working to keep them in this apartment... now his eyeball was on a string hanging from the ceiling.
The entire thing was laid out like a painting. One of hers, with light and dark, shadow and blood, trying to draw the eye right to the subjects at the forefront, as though it needed drawing. It tried. It didn't really succeed, but even in her surprise and rising anger she recognised the technique.
And she was angry, very angry. She had never been so angry in her life, but normally anger wasn't something to be bothered with, rather like grief. Things happen. Deal with them. Try to avoid them in the future. Only practical.
But now the practical side of her just went out the window.
She didn't call the police. She didn't break down crying. She didn't yell or throw things or otherwise show her anger. That would come later. For now she simply turned around and left; someone else could find these empty shells, someone else could deal with them properly.
Someone was trying to send her a message, she knew that much. It was specific, and hanging an eyeball on a string didn't make too much sense otherwise. In fact it didn't make too much sense with this theory, either, but Lilya had already made up her mind that it was so, and someone was going to pay, whoever was behind it. They had taken her family away from her. It was her family. Hers. Nobody took what was hers.
You could have framed it.
There were too many people. Too many fragments. Coren liked fragments, but she understood the importance of moderation - people got confused if there was too much of anything. Confused, worried, angry, fearful... that was people. So everything needed to fit, to suit the people.
The problem was, there were too many people. And Coren simply did not know what to do about this. Too many to keep track of, too many to manage. Too much to follow. The story is too complicated, the guest list too long, the party just plain and simply too large. And simplifying it at this point is simply not an option. This is the world, after all, and everyone in it has their place, and everyone has an effect, no matter how small, that affects the whole.
So all there is to do is to go on. To smile and to mingle and to don the mask of belonging, to be a person for a little while and to be a part of the party that she had gone to all this trouble to put on. So Lilya Coren smiled, took the hand of her colleague, and walked out onto the floor, amidst the music and the colour and the vibrancy that everyone held so dear. This was the world they lived in, so she would live in it too, but though it remained alien to her, they would never know it. She moved from group to group, making conversation, noting interests and lies, and weaving all of those who had answered the invitation into her web.
Time is, of course, supposed to be viewed in order. It's like a good landscape painting - if you only look at small pieces of it in no particular order, you might wind up seeing all of it, but it won't look anything like all of it, just a bit of tree here, some grass there, some mountainy bits, some random birds in the sky, a piece of a cow - it might be interesting, but it doesn't give you the big picture unless you look at all of it as all of it, in some semblance of order. It doesn't tell you the story unless you can see what's going on.
Coren was good at landscapes. In fact she was good at most pictures, everything from portraits to fractals to the abstract. She ought to be. She had spent most of her life painting. Painting, scamming, killing, and then trying to understand it all, because quite frankly it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Life, that is. And death, really.
The only things Lilya Coren truly understood were paint and how to kill. She was good with people, oh, she was very good with them, but she didn't understand them. She could kill them, but that didn't really help. If anything, it made it worse. But she could also scam them, and while that also didn't really help, it had made a good living for her.
It had been something, at least.
Now, though, she had more. She had, in a way, a family - people who understood her and accepted her for who and what she was, and while they weren't necessarily happy about it, neither, frankly, was she. And that helped, somehow.
And she had a job, not only that was entirely legal and paid real money, but was also, in its own disturbing way, a satisfying one.
Coren was a hunter, and in this job was the hunt.
Coren entered Carter's office and watched him for a moment. He gestured for her to sit.
"You know I don't do grief," she said, still standing.
He nodded. "The brass expects a report, however. Mandatory grief counselling is mandatory."
"So what should I say? The truth, or what they would want to read?" She cocked her head. "And which will you write down?"
"You don't need to keep secrets here."
Coren finally sat. "That's not an answer."
Carter smiled slightly.
"I'll tell you how I see it, then," Coren said. "Albright was here. Now she isn't, in some part because we failed her, and I most of all. But done is done, and here we are. Albright is dead. However we feel about that, we need to worry about the living now."
"And how do you feel about that?" Carter asked.
"Irritated. Albright was ours, and he took her away from us. But you already knew that." She looked him over. "But how are you holding up? We're all reporting to you - who are you talking to?"
"You may go," he said.
Coren moved to leave, but paused. "Really, make sure you talk to someone. Please."
