The Poet and The Soldier

Seven.

"Asinine, sophomoric, nonsensically preposterous, imbecilic, cretinous-" To Isadora's horror, she stops mid-rant, her mind failing to produce its usual spectrum of vocabulary.

Well, she supposes moodily, stalking to the kitchen. It's not like it's any different from the entire goddamn day.

Jerk open the fridge door, grab a bag of old bread, slam the door. There's a few dull thuds and a shattering sound. Whatever. Her stomach's protestations are beginning to become distracting. She easily used to be able to go several days without eating, but now, after rehab and missing breakfast and-

What time is it?

The digital clock on the oven reads thirteen minutes past midnight.

Right, so she's missed lunch and dinner too. Whatever.

She shoves the bread into the toaster before dropping into a chair, holding her face in her hands.

"Never again," she vows, muttering under her breath. "Never fucking aga-" she breaks off with a noise of frustration. No swearing while working; it makes her lazy in her articulation, makes her falter from the standards to which she holds her poetry.

It's one of her rules.

However, even in her admittedly limited experience of commissions, they never go well. It's true you can't create poetry out of nothing, and after an entire afternoon and most of the night spent in effort with not a single useable line, Isadora had been rudely reminded of this.

She doesn't exactly have nothing though, even if it certainly feels that way. After she'd kicked out Gregson and Brown, she'd spent hours flipping through albums, pulling out photographs.

Anna at birthday parties, dark hair wild and chubby face excited, aged six; Anna going to a school dance, arm in arm with another girl, aged sixteen. Anna on holiday, standing on top of a hill with her arms to the sky, hips cocked; Anna curled up with her little brother on a couch in front of the television, in profile her eyes tight, her mouth tense.

The toast pops up, burnt. Isadora growls and launches herself out of her chair, storming back into the living room and hurling herself onto the couch.

The rest of the room is trashed, the mess from this morning combined with the chaotic conditions in which she prefers to work. Photographs are pinned to the wall above the sofa, papers analysing the images stuck next to them; Isadora is futilely trying to build an image of this girl, this woman, in her head.

She feels ready to tear her hair out. The sheer ambiguity of the pictures is driving her insane. The girl Anna went to the dance with - friend, or something more? Clutching at her brother so fiercely - out of anger or fear?

If only she could ask Connor Brown. Just a short interview, nothing more, but her pride refuses to let her break her own rules. Brown already gave her several of Anna's characteristics when he was convincing her to take the job, the chief one being protective, which spins off into questions of her moral strength, her standards, the lengths she would go to for those she loves. Loved.

God, she wants a hit. Just a little bit, just something to get the words going. To kick-start that snap moment of revelation as all the words and patterns fall into place. But she just can't manage to summon the finely detailed techniques and technicalities that have always defined her work.

She rummages for her cigarettes, putting one to her lips and lighting it with shaking hands. Her eyes close, inhaling deeply to distract herself.

When was the last time she slept? Doesn't matter, she doesn't need it. She didn't need it before she got clean, and between the insomnia and the cigarettes she doesn't need it now.