NOTES: Michele Scicluna and Threadgold are agents of Black Air who debuted along with Peter Wisdom in Excalibur #86. Though I'd never given them much thought, awhile back I decided to resurrect Black Air in an RPG I'm part of, and subsequently pulled Michele into the game as a way to start things up. Since then, it's occurred to me that there is perhaps one piece of fanfiction on the Web that features either of these underused characters (and I don't mean in supporting roles, either), and while their screen time was short, I felt they were interesting enough to deserve more. Also, yes, I realize that this tends to switch tenses a lot. It was intentional, so stop looking at me that way.
At first glance, there are very few people who would be capable of pegging Michele Scicluna as a hardened killer. Cold, perhaps -- there has been a decidedly chill look to those stunning blue-grey eyes for years now -- but no, not a killer.
Her beauty, her utter mesmirazation, is a perfect distraction for those who would be capable of seeing the real truth. I know this because it has been quite effective against me for years, and undoubtedly will be until the day I die. She has been quite aware of this, utilized it at every opportunity. It is a tactic which has brought profit to our mutual employers countless times, but I am no less jealous now than I was at the first.
My only reassurance is that she is mine. Tenatively, at best, but still mine. My partner, my lover, my goddess, Scicluna is all these.
While I would never admit to it, I have whiled away my time reading her personel files more than once. Scicluna's first name, Michele. At one point in my life I had a brother named Michael, long ago in a far different world than the one which currently holds me in its thrall. Their names are essentially the same, translated to "who is like God." It fits her. She is my dark goddess, carved from ice.
Flawed, but still beautiful, she is the incarnation of all the Grecian deities in a single vessel.
She is the pagan goddesses -- maiden, mother and crone, all in one.
When she looked at me through misted eyes early in the day, she was a seductress.
When she shouted out her bloodlust on the field, she was a warrior.
When she clung to me at night, sobbing for her father, for her forgotten life, she was a child.
And despite the hatred for people, for Wisdom, for Black Air -- for life itself -- she is still mine. Ours is an undeniably twisted relationship. It takes curves and turns in directions I suspect will never be understandable to me.
She uses me, that much is obvious.
I love her, and she was aware of this.
She is my ultimate weakness. Were anyone ever to come into this knowledge, it would be my ruin. As Agent Threadgold, I am known for a sadistic streak that could span the whole of London. There is no member of the Intelligence community that would dare cross me except for my ice goddess herself, and perhaps that ponce Wisdom, though I would certainly never count him as anything more than a momentary irritation.
It is Scicluna who could destroy me with a touch, a word, a mere look. She is the only thing in the world which I have ever feared, this woman whom I've so readily given what remains of my heart to.
Which is why I killed her.
No longer could I tolerate the unspoken threats she posed against me, or the way she so precariously held my soul in hands that appeared to be carved from frozen milk. Rumors of my imminent cancellation were breathed, feather light, along the corridors of our wetworks division's home. When we stood in them, deep within Black Air's Tower, and she kissed me with her usual indifferent passion, the truth became apparent to me.
My beautiful killer was scheduled to do more than just bruise and bleed me. There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that she knew of my awareness.
When we left the Tower for my flat, the ice in her gaze had cracked. Eye contact alone caused what I knew to otherwise be a black heart to make a sudden lurch forward and begin a painful twitching. In that moment, I loved her more than life itself, and on the fine line she had always caused me to walk along, my simultaneous hatred for her spilled over.
I wanted nothing quite so much as to hear for her cool, manicured voice return every humiliating declaration of love I'd given before I wrapped my hands around her slender neck and twisted. Standing in the spacious area I called home, she shocked me by doing something just as unexpected. She smiled. It was undeniably the most heartwrenching expression I had ever glimpsed upon her fine features. I wish I could say any human face, but when one murders for a living, one also sees endless flashes of fear and pain.
It felt as though we unholstered our weapons, aimed, and fired as one. My withered romanticism honestly believes that this is so. The only thing I can be sure of is that, as always, my aim was far more true than hers. Poetic justice, it seemed. I had bypassed the opportunity to ruin Scicluna's marvelous face. Her icy beauty was the last thing I wanted to see, needed to view. Instead I let her heart explode, like mine had been threatening to do under her mark for a small lifetime.
What confounds me is that I fell first under the barrage she unleashed against me, aghast at the feel of my innards being pulverized. Yet the dark goddess I'd been worshipping died long before I, though she took far longer to crumple to the bloody floor. Were I able to draw breath, I would contemplate this, silently analyze it as I did every other aspect of Scicluna and our beautifully horrible partnership.
Were I but able.
Perhaps my goddess and I will meet somewhere else, a killer's hell, and then I will know.
Until then, I do believe I shall take some time off from thinking about the despicable woman I love so much, and how our hearts exploded in one quick flashbang.