Leila Yilmaz

Leila Yilmaz
"I wonder what makes some of my compatriots more nervous--my mind or my body? Maybe the combination."
Canon:	World of Darkness
Species:	Human kinfolk/witch/scientist
Hometown:	Kemer, Turkey
Age:	24
Journal:	hercandleguides
Player:	Kay

"Everything is true. Anything is possible."
- The Kitab al-Alacir, or Book of the Ether

ophelia was the rebel girl, a blue stocking suffragette

Leila Gözde Yilmaz is a 24-year-old recent graduate from Johns Hopkins' bioengineering program, intending to pursue an official doctorate at the Singapore Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Secretly she is also part-time callgirl in the spirit of other young, resourceful students who can't quite afford tuition on their own, and even more secretly a member of the Sons of Ether magical Tradition (making her a witch), whose name correctly implies that not many other women are part of their organization. She is of Kurdish ancestry and was born in Tarsus, Turkey, but has lived in the United States (specifically New Canaan, CT, but later Boston to attend MIT, and Baltimore for Johns Hopkins) since the age of ten, and consequently has little in the way of a Turkish accent. Physically she is reasonably distinctive for a young human-looking woman, mostly owing to how she's sporting an assortment of tattoos; otherwise, she is about 5'7", built curvy on a small frame, with long black hair, very fair skin, and near-black dark eyes.

Her sense of style tends toward 'relentlessly 1940s pin-up,' loosely inspired by femme fatales of days gone by like Lauren Bacall and Sophia Loren, and can be depending on your personal aesthetic tastes be considered glamorous--high heels, seamed stockings, wiggle dresses to accent her build, striking bold colors, old-fashioned perfume (L'Air Du Temps), typically all paired with red lipstick to contrast her coloring, and all of this is deliberately designed to be intimidating, by the way. It is generally pretty obvious she has some money, although a lot of her expensive jewelry is all 'gifted' to her. Leila is also kinfolk to the werewolf tribe of Silent Striders, but that's not something she tends to bring up often, because it is intensely politically awkward.

Her tattoos include:

• Wings on her upper shoulder blades, black and white.
• Snake and owl in green, black, and blue, right side of derriere, leading into:
• Flowering tree on right hip, over ribcage, extending from the previous tattoo
• Full sleeve on left arm, white ink with pockets of exposed gears (blue-green, gold), religious iconography (blue) and gemstones (blue)
• STAY TUNED if she finds a way to get new ones in Taxon.

who remedied society between her cigarettes

Leila: "I should give lessons in being a crazy bitch girlfriend."
Solomon: "Having had my share of crazy bitch girlfriends, I would like to say, as an expert and a connoisseur, that what you do cannot be taught. And before you hurt me for that, may I remind you that I proposed."

Leila is a magnetically self-destructive lunatic who is too intelligent for her own good, and soon there will be information on how she methodically sabotages her personal relationships! She is very ambitious, very moody, and extremely controlling in close relationships, if permitted; while she has found a romantic partner, because it's Leila, they fight a lot (although not as hideously as they used to, now that he's left his wife...yes, they're great), because he knows all her tricks, after four years. She is the kind of intellectually brilliant that could easily lend itself to becoming monstrous, but Etherites are conscientious about peer review and preventing anyone from going off the rails. She has a long line of ex-lovers with whom she played endless mind games, and on a professional level she is the icy young thing who does good work but does not tolerate even the tiniest bit of bullshit. It doesn't mean she doesn't care about people, but she's self-protective, at the same time: she has a very hard time letting down her guard.

Also soon: info on how her science works, because it is only half science. Half of it is magic.

Leila is an INTJ "Strategist" personality, which is the least common of all personality types for women and the second-least common of all personality types, period. Quotes on the INTJ personality type:

"INTJs are introspective, analytical, determined persons with natural leadership ability. Being reserved, they prefer to stay in the background while leading. Strategic, knowledgable and adaptable, INTJs are talented in bringing ideas from conception to reality. They expect perfection from themselves as well as others and are comfortable with the leadership of another so long as they are competent. INTJs can also be described as decisive, open-minded, self-confident, attentive, theoretical and pragmatic. " Leila is somewhat more temperamental than the average INTJ, and possibly more extroverted, but that extroversion is learned and her temper is something she works to control.

ophelia was the mistress to a vegas gambling man

"It is like we are each living in a magnificent mansion. But we lock ourselves in one room."
- Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

signora ophelia maraschina, mafia courtesan

warning: yilmaz family contains crazy.

Leila Yilmaz (born November 19th, 1984, making her very much a Scorpio) hails from a Kurdish family of Silent Striders, a werewolf tribe that originates from the Middle East and Africa; she herself is not a werewolf, but rather one of the 'human' kinfolk who assist and have children with the wolves, since two of them breeding together creates a 'mutant' or metis child. The tribe is known for their nomadic ways, and slightly unsettling air, owing to having performed the most extensive probing into the Umbra or Otherworld, as well as the realms of the dead, and their Gifts reflect this spiritual, introspective nature. They obsessively collect information and make ideal spies, known for investigating the areas no one else has been or even wants to go. Leila's mother, Gamze, originally hails from Tarsus but now lives in a caern in Kemer, Turkey, painting its walls with murals and incessantly making food for everyone, and Leila's father, Ercan, is an ahroun (a werewolf born under a moon sign, or auspisce, that indicates they are especially war-oriented, meaning they can be grunts, or they can be warlords, but they're always meant for battle, which among the Striders often equates to guerrilla warfare) centered out of a traveling pack that has gone all over the world, so Leila probably has half-siblings, since the Garou are aware they desperately need to fill the ranks for fighting the Wyrm, but she's never met them and is not presently in much of a position to find out. Leila is the middle-younger of four children, two of her siblings being girls; her younger sister, Esra, is twenty and experienced her First Change--transformation into a werewolf--two years ago, functioning as a theurge (shaman auspisce), and her oldest sibling, a sister called Gülçin, died recently. Her brother, Zeki, is twenty-seven and married to a controversial ragabash (the trickster moon auspisce) called Dilruba, with whom he actully travels, instead of staying at home with the other kinfolk maintaining one of their caerns/bases; they have three children already--Su and Songül who are their twin girls, aged three, and Ferit, aged four. Additionally she has a maternal aunt named Zülal, who has no children and therefore will sometimes go into battle with the werewolves, including her husband, Yıldırım, a galliard (the bardic auspisce) werewolf who is part of Ercan's pack.

Leila lived in Kemer for the first decade of her life, though she was born in her mother's home city of Tarsus, and typically she was closest with her sister Gülçin, who was not dissimilar in temperament and about six years older than Leila herself. Ercan and Gamze were never typically married, and Ercan was generally roaming, dropping in at their household maybe three or four times a year, and Leila grew up with the uncomfortably heavy weight of knowing what was expected of kinfolk, especially girl kinfolk, which is...uh, being used as a broodmare, often. This is not something she took to very well, and although she wouldn't describe herself as a troublemaker, she kind of actually is, just because even though she knew what she was supposed to do 'for the sake of family', she never really believed she would. She has always known about the supernatural: her tribe's opinions on the others, the particularly strong Silent Strider hatred for vampires, and their distrust of magic-users were always part of her life, but at the same time, most of the regulars at the caern were kinfolk like her, and therefore the werewolves were often a variable, bringing storms of energy and wildness. When she demonstrated the ability to use gnosis, or the limited ability to use some garou gifts--rare and prized in kinfolk--her parents began immediately making plans for her future.

Shortly after Leila's tenth birthday, they were en route to visit another group of Striders temporarily in Ankara to discuss the potential for prophecy in the dreams Leila had repeatedly with the experienced theurges there. The undead seemed to feature prominently in her dreams, and she wasn't the only Strider kinfolk to have experiences of this kind--their work in the Umbra and spirituality seemed to attune most of the tribe to psychic nuance. The trip, however, was interrupted by Leila's abduction in the dead of night: the Bahari, mortal and vampire followers of Lilith, had sought her out, under the impression her visions and appearance, evocative of the Dark Mother herself, meant she was someone she wasn't: the Last Daughter of Eve, of whom they had only a first name. Even at ten, Leila was as fascinated by her captors' lifestyles as she was afraid of them--the Bahari have a philosophy that includes whole-heartedly embracing both the good and bad in life, constantly pushing themselves to their limits. Furthermore, they used technology, which Leila was not especially acquainted with at the time; many werewolves are careful with their involvement in the sciences, believing it to be Weaver-spawned.

She spent only two days among them. In that time, it became apparent she was not the girl they were looking for, but her dreams were related to the girl in question (who was, going by dream interpretation, actually much younger than Leila herself and possibly still only a baby), which is fortunately probably what kept Leila alive long enough for her family and local caern members to stage a rescue, with the assistance of some Verbena mages from Ankara. Mages and werewolves may not be mighty fond of one another, but the Verbena have a vested interest in followers of Lilith, owing to the legend that she started their very Tradition, and frankly nobody really likes vampires that much in WoD, they're kind of jerks. So they worked together, although all Leila remembers about most of that day was waking up dazed in a hideaway in Ankara, her older sister peering down at her worriedly; she'd been drained of a lot of blood, which is not difficult to do even accidentally when the victim is ten years old. The one to feed off her had been a member of the Bahari's ranks named Saul, that she remembers even if the specifics are blurry. She's always wondered where he went after that, despite herself.

As anyone might imagine, after this their little caern in Kemer wasn't as safe as it used to be. Most of Leila's family stayed there, but she was sent to join her father's pack for a time--to learn weaponry, how to defend herself, all of those things kinfolk are expected to know something about by a certain age. She didn't actually enjoy the lifestyle, however, which was not necessarily because she doesn't enjoy travel but more because her interests, as she hit puberty, became divergent. She stole library books about anything and everything, but especially the hard sciences, whenever they were in a town with one around, and argued with her father frequently, which other kinfolk, Zülal excepting, often found disconcerting. This was particularly exacerbated by the fact that after her ordeal with the Bahari, Leila sort of felt the initial traces of really strong cynicism, or at least a general inability to be scared when she probably should be. That compounded by the teenage girl rage rite of passage meant that one day, when the wrong fight hit supernatural werewolf rage with such severity her father could not control his temper, Leila ended up in the hospital with broken bones, and it became very clear to her why Ercan didn't stay around much at all: even for an ahroun, he did not have a lot by way of self-control. He did genuinely feel terrible, and he's never struck her or any of his other children since, but it nevertheless happened, and in a twisted way Leila considers herself lucky: it was the turning point in her life.

After that, it became apparent that no one really knew what to do with her. She couldn't go home, but she couldn't stay there. Zülal eventually found a caern in New Canaan, Connecticut for Leila to live in, fostering with an older woman named Verda Sevinç whose children had all grown up. Verda was not actually hugely pleased with taking on yet another responsibility, and she made sure Leila knew it would only last as long as it took for her to turn eighteen, but their arrangement settled fairly rapidly, because Leila was also completely disinterested in being parented by her own family members, by this point, much less a total stranger. Socially she developed many friendships which seemed close but dissolved when she no longer saw the need to maintain them; she was never lonely, rarely home, and despite not being that economically blessed, she managed to comfortably insinuate herself among the wealthier locals, though she was constantly aware she was the 'scholarship kid' and therefore was expected to maintain a higher standard, lacking the cushion of money. Imminent success, however, was something Leila learned to project with a mixture of clipped confidence and deliberate charm; she made herself seem harmless, though in reality she had some really distinct Mean Girl tendencies that she generally only inflicted on her immediate clique, and it was all chalked up to "girls and their infighting." It was difficult for her to go from the hard-won, aggressive practicality of the werewolves to the cushy futures of her peer group in New Canaan, and her choices in boyfriends then--and now, too--tended to reflect the men she'd been raised around as a child, not the prepsters she met as a teenager. That said, she did observe one similarity: the heavy weight of high expectations, it seemed, was impossible to avoid, regardless of your background.

Leila also did extremely well in school, skipping two grades (eighth and ninth--she could have done a lot more, but uh, was really disinterested in being in one of those awkward fourteen-year-olds in graduate school type of situations), which meant that she began college at the age of sixteen, double majoring at MIT in physics and biological engineering, the latter of which is a fairly recently developed major which involves what would be required of a biology major and takes it a step further. Her scholarship was extremely lucky, because she did not have financial support for university at all, and she struggled though her first two years barely sleeping; part of what did help her significantly was joining Pi Beta Phi, though certain nuances of sorority life are pretty ridiculous, she could put up with it for the benefits. Sometimes this did extend toward partying a little bit too much, but after one semester in which her grades suffered, she cleaned up her act immediately, and despite the stereotypes about sorority girls, cocaine use was not actually considered especially normal, so it wasn't a great loss. Toward the tail end of her sophomore year, however, one of her older classmates confided in Leila as to how she had personally provided for herself when in dire financial straits--she'd taken up escorting, and the idea appealed to Leila on multiple levels. To begin with, she didn't consider herself a romantic, and furthermore her field of study would make it really easy to detach from humanity. This was a form of research that she could benefit from financially, which is pretty damn rare in a scientific field. You didn't even have to be beautiful to succeed at it (though it helped), just interested in other people.

Before she could embark on this particular path, however, she met the Etherites, or rather, she met Dr. Kathleen Morrow. A professor of chemical engineering at MIT, their paths crossed during Leila's assisting a graduate student's work on a project involving predictive simulations to monitor carbon sequestration; Kathleen was one of the few women involved in the secret society of magic-using scientists, and she was always scouting for new talent. Preferably female talent, because the Etherites are aware they have a gender imbalance. Although they generally prefer to Awaken individuals who have their doctorate, Leila was clearly on that path, and Kathleen thought that there was profit to be had in nurturing some young minds. So Leila joined the Etherites at the tender age of eighteen, along with three or four of her fellow students at MIT, and she's been with them ever since. Joining them actually gave her something of a confidence boost, and after seeing how reclusively some of them lived, she was even more convinced that her humanist bent meant she had to stay actively involved in people, not just labs, in the parts of people that were secret and dirty and taboo, the things they could only say to someone who was paid to be there for them and then to go away once they were done; she could pretend to be an object, a receptacle of secrets, and she could take those secrets with her as valuable information when she left. And...furthermore, she needed a job that paid better than waiting tables.

The intellectual student by day/callgirl by night trope has become something of a cultural cliche, thanks to the efforts of real-life sex workers like Belle du Jour, but the reality is not quite so glossy. Leila discovered as much after a couple of years of work, but by then she was so entrenched in the lifestyle--she made enough money that she didn't need to work continuously or exhaustively, but she definitely learned a lot about people, almost as much as she learned in her education as an Etherite--that she didn't see any point in leaving. She took routine breaks sometimes lasted up to six months, and she was pretty sure Kathleen knew what she was doing, but--she wondered if Dr. Morrow regretted initiating her into the Etherites in the first place, frankly. Leila immediately veered toward the most transhumanist concepts; like all Etherites, she understood the importance of being well-rounded in her education and not just in regards to the sciences, but she wanted to focus on people, on the ways that the spirit connected to the body and how that could be enhanced, built upon, reinforced. Her upbringing was reflected in her choices as a budding scientist, though she didn't understand then that she could never escape her beginning in life as a daughter of wolves. Her life seemed so different--clearly, she was also a different person.

Bright colors forever, hooray.

Or not. Her first serious relationship, which began in her junior year and ended the summer before she left for Baltimore to participate in the Bioengineering Innovation and Design masters program, was pretty much hideous in that way where she even knew it was going to be a trainwreck; Quinn was a drug dealer, kind of an angry jerk a lot of the time, but had his moments of sensitivity when their relationship did not actually involve...violence. His rage was only an echo of the pure, supernatural anger the wolves she grew up with could express, but vastly less likely to permanently damage her--that said, he didn't have much of a handle on it, and when things finally ended she was unsteady, focusing as hard as she could on her new life in Baltimore. Moving was part of her plan to end the relationship, and she didn't miss Quinn, exactly, she just didn't know what to do with herself without him because he'd fulfilled a large portion of what she'd felt was missing from her life: close connections where she didn't have to be honest. Work (for the Etherites and for her own finances) and school almost became tedious, and although she hated contacting them, she almost missed her family. They generally regarded her as Trouble now that she'd abandoned them for the mages, in their eyes, but her mother in Kemer still had hope she'd somehow return to them and fulfill her obligations as kinfolk, and Leila just figured--well, they have other children, she couldn't be too much of a missing piece. Even her faintly prophetic dreams were echoed in her young nieces, so they didn't need her, did they?

The Etherites and the Verbena are very similar in a lot of ways, though they might seem to come at life from opposing viewpoints. They're both moral, but on their own terms, and they both are the Traditions that don't just change things but create from new. Of the mages, they are the demiurges. The Verbena tend to be less fond of the Etherites than the mellower Etherites are of them, but they do sometimes coincide, and Leila had always liked them, from the time that little coven in Ankara had come to her rescue as a child, and furthermore of all the mages werewolves tend to get along with Verbena and Dreamspeakers best, so she volunteered herself to go and meet up with the local coven of blood-mages in Baltimore. Her specific interests in transforming the human body and spirit meant she wanted to learn from the members of the oldest Tradition, too, at least their philosophies, so she attended one of their parties, a lone girl in a red dress, and that was where she met Solomon Koenig, a priest of the Verbena roughly ten years her senior. They had that sort of funny combination of not really getting along but having really strong chemistry right off the bat, and since they were both functioning as a liaison to each other's Traditions, they ended up spending some time together. It only took about six months before 'spending some time' turned into 'spending a lot,' which turned out to be somewhat unfortunate because Solomon was, in fact, married, and to a woman named Tonya who is in no way involved in the supernatural and had no idea about any of it.

Solomon is pretty dangerous, as far as Verbena go, and he can have a temper, too, but his anger is icy, almost serpentine, kind of like she gets; he is a former member of the armed forces and presently works as an attorney specializing in enviromental law, employed by a top American ecological law firm. She thinks he should have political ambitions, but he disagrees, citing his slightly prickly temperament and fondness for verbal barbs as just one reason why not. The other reason is probably the whole 'long-running affair' thing. Their relationship has lasted roughly four years off and on: they tended to break up, they get back together, repeat cycle. She made it clear in the beginning she didn't expect him to leave his wife (although there have been times where he probably would have if she'd asked, depending on their present feelings for each other), and frankly until Taxon never even really wanted that, because if they had a conventional relationship she'd be continually terrified of his discovering the aspects of herself she hides or seeing more vulnerability in her than he already has. She loves him, but she didn't want him to know her, though despite her best efforts he saw more than she was entirely comfortable with--still, she was particular about maintaining that wall around herself. And he did help her with understanding her dreams, which he thought were actually suggestive of past lives (not uncommon among mages, but perhaps slightly more so with the Etherites), but she wasn't sure. She still thought of the Bahari, and wondered if they could help her understand, but she knew that'd be insanely dangerous. The handful that she met, after almost fifteen years, were probably dead by now.

In January, her sister Gülçin summoned her to Los Angeles to visit her, and since she was the main member of her family with whom Leila was still regularly in contact, she went. There Gülçin expressed serious concerns about her lifestyle--the occasional foray into prostitution to pay the bills, the previous history of drug use (though Leila did think that was a little over the top, since she'd barely used anything since she was twenty-one and she was never an addict), the affair, the magic, to say the least. Since Leila completed graduate school in December, one semester early, she was technically available, and Gülçin convinced her to stay with her in her apartment for a while and Leila agreed. Later, however, Leila ended up blowing her off when they were supposed to meet up back at the apartment, to go handle an increasingly dangerous situation with a Nephandus, having been enlisted by some local Etherites, only to have Gülçin track her down during the fray. Brave and determined as always, she chose to get involved despite Leila's protests, which led to Gülçin being torn apart by a shadow-creature the Nephandus, a man named St. Cloud, had summoned. They did manage to kill their enemy and consequently extinguish the shadowy thing from beyond the rift he'd summoned, and Leila was left to find her family and inform them of what had happened.

The funeral was small, attended by all the members of her tribe and family that could make it and knew about it in time. No one spoke to Leila except her little niece Su, precociously aware of the nuances of adults' hearts as always, and she didn't speak to anyone except the child, either, and even then, only for a moment. They all left immediately, and Solomon tried at least once to talk to her, because he understood that it'd probably take a couple of attempts before she was comfortable expressing herself there (and he hadn't been able to come to LA to see her, although he made it clear that he intended to, which would've been interesting). She was attempting to do her 'running away' thing again and thus, having completed graduate school, had applied to the Research Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in, uh, Singapore, and she did expect to be accepted, though whether she'd actually go all the way across the globe to escape herself will never really be resolved that way. Leila, in accordance with custom, chose to dress in black mourning clothes for the week following her sister's funeral; she arrived in Taxon on the last day of that week.

ophelia was a tempest cyclone, a goddamn hurricane

In Taxon, Leila had precious little time to herself before Solomon showed up, too, and once he had the lay of the land, he was looking for her. taxon history + xanadu history

your common sense, your best defense lay wasted and in vain

"You're kidnapped by aliens and brought to a fucking computerized city and your first concern is 'Leila, we need to talk'? Sol, this is the first time in my life I've ever said this to someone, but did you ever think maybe I should not be your first priority here?"

she'd sympathize and dry your eyes and help you to forget

Solomon Koenig: Leila's boyfriend, an environmental lawyer who also happens to be married (though now in the process of divorce), because good decisions abound in WoD. He is vastly more patient with her than she probably deserves. In Taxon, he was able to force her to open up to him a little bit more, and she's made some progress in that regard, noting that he would eventually have to choose which woman he wants to keep instead of waiting around for one of them to leave him. And in response, he has stopped wearing his wedding ring, then roundaboutly proposed to Leila, too, which she accepted. "Don't German at me, American. I speak more languages than I have degrees, which is saying something."
Hermes Maiados Huios

but ophelia's mind went wandering, you'd wonder where she'd gone

Leila is basically 'expensive hooker' barbie anyway.

CAT POWER "NUDE AS THE NEWS" :: Backhand, role reversal, where is someone? Backhand, reversible roles. I know there's someone. I still have a flame gun for the cute ones, to burn out all your tricks. And I saw your hand with a loose grip on such a tight ship. And I know that in the cold light is a very big man, leading us into temptation.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN "SECRET GARDEN" :: She'll let you in her house, if you come knockin' late at night. She'll let you in her mouth, if the words you say are right. If you pay the price she'll let you deep inside, but there's a secret garden she hides. She'll let you in her car to go drivin' round, she'll let you into the parts of herself that'll bring you down. She'll let you in her heart if you got a hammer and a vise, but into her secret garden, don't think twice. She'll lead you down a path, there'll be tenderness in the air; she'll let you come just far enough so you know she's really there. She'll look at you and smile, and her eyes will say she's got a secret garden where everything you want, where everything you need will always stay a million miles away.
DEXTER FREEBISH "LEAVING TOWN" :: Oh, your reputation's so golden; you're never lonely and you're never home. I know you've been talking about leaving, you've lost all your feeling for this town. Paint your nails and put on your lipstick, you don't want to miss your ticket out. Just because you graduate from school so high in the gene pool, that's your point of view, but when you're broken down and no one else is around, you'll come running back to this town and I'll be there, 'cause I remember how we drank time together and how you used to say that the stars are forever and daydreamed about how to make your life better, by leaving town, leaving town. Nothing in life will ever come that easy, doesn't mean it has to be that hard; I know you will find out who you are.
ALL TIME LOW "TOXIC VALENTINE" :: She's got a target painted on her back, and keeps a list of the qualities a good girl lacks. She bites her lip and tips her bottle; I take a drink 'cause the truth is hard to swallow. Sex and white lies, handcuffs and alibis. She lays her halo on the pillow as she sleeps. Her heart beats red wine, my toxic valentine lays her halo on the pillow that used to be mine. I live a lifestyle full of first impressions, I've got my hands full of unhealthy obsessions. She bites my lip, I'm sure to follow; we take a drink to the guilty and the hollowed. 'Cause I'm not the type to forget or to bury my head. Just take off your wings, they could never get you quite as high as I did, and you know it.
TIAMAT "WINGS OF HEAVEN" :: I'll be your master and I'll be your slave, at least until the day that you will dance avidly on my grave. Thank you my angelic belly-dancing concubine, like Cleopatra you're sleeping safe in a royal shrine. Thank you for the blood and tears and for the table dance; wholeheartedly, I thank you, dear, for our short romance.
ORGY "PLATINUM" :: You can't escape what makes you tragic, you know. Vicious 'cause you want to be, leaving time possessed to please you. What might have been was never the way you envisioned things; so difficult to stop pretending, what's this to you, anyway? Turn down the voluptuous, keeping close to me again. Hold back your virtues, you're fearless in motion. You found your way, so why keep asking me? Nothing common suits you, you live again in solitary. Look away for now, beautiful alone, who decides to settle down? Maybe nobody really cares. Something dirty's got you, dear; makes me want to be with you. Something painful's with you, dear; makes me want to be with you.
ELBOW "RED" :: Come as you are, sweetheart, come as you are. You know you've got nothing to prove. I'll put you to bed, you can let it all go. You've been playing too rough lately, you know you burn too bright, you live too fast, this can't go on too long. You're a tragedy starting to happen.
THE MAVISES "WITCH HUNT" :: She's so bright, yet she's the darkest one I know. Behind machines and gadgets lies something else; cakes are iced so sweet, they're spiked with poison deadly, vacuuming up all beneath her feet. Find a passage where the light's a different color, she speaks a language others just don't know.
CRYSTAL CASTLES "TELL ME WHAT TO SWALLOW"
IAMX "THE GREAT SHIPWRECK OF LIFE"
TORI AMOS "BLOOD ROSES" ::
ANI DIFRANCO "SPADE" "ASKING TOO MUCH" ::
TEGAN AND SARA "DAYS AND DAYS" ::
IRON & WINE "EVENING ON THE GROUND" ::
THE DETROIT COBRAS "BAD GIRL" ::

through secret doors down corridors she wanders them alone

Leila is, obviously, fictional; her played-by is Fahriye Evcen, and the lyrics used here are from Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia".