Post New Moon, Kate & Edward
Oct. 29th, 2010 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Edward was sitting on a bench outside Milliways. Even as much as he might want to try to make himself relaxed, it's not as easy to slip back into. His posture is too rigid, too still for calm, fingers pressed just too much against his legs. Before him, where his affixed gaze, all too black eyed still, rested, is the Lake-Ocean, and the setting sun.
Behind him is the Bar, and his Door, leading back to Bella's bedroom.
Presently, he's trying to count to ten minutes without running back to make sure she's real.
That all of this, every thought and image and assumption of reality is not a creation of insanity.
Behind him is the Bar, and his Door, leading back to Bella's bedroom.
Presently, he's trying to count to ten minutes without running back to make sure she's real.
That all of this, every thought and image and assumption of reality is not a creation of insanity.
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Date: 2010-10-31 06:39 pm (UTC)Her breath catches when she sees him. She squints hard at his profile against the setting sun and the glimmering water, making sure he isn't some apparition of her imagination.
Watching to see if he'll move.
(Heart plummeting when it doesn't look like he will.)
She deviates from her course, coming off the beaten path to cut her way to him. She doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know what she could say that won't come out paltry or trite. Not understanding yet that there's nothing she needs to say that he hasn't already heard.
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Date: 2010-10-31 11:29 pm (UTC)She's Jasper's Kate. Alice's.
It's supposed to mean something.
At least here in Milliways it's supposed. It did once.
For a moment he's distracted. She was here last time, too.
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Date: 2010-11-01 01:05 am (UTC)"...Hi."
It's ridiculously not enough. Testing the water to see if he'll react.
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Date: 2010-11-01 01:12 am (UTC)But at about half a minute he shifted his shoulders.
The way a normal person might if they'd let out a breath.
(Even if his chest hadn't moved up or down before it at all.)
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Date: 2010-11-01 02:20 am (UTC)But then he shifts -- it's so slight, she almost misses it -- and it fills her with something akin to hope.
She's too stunned to speak for another half minute.
"I heard--" She wets her too-dry lips, "--about what happened."
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Date: 2010-11-01 03:05 am (UTC)It helps. But she's all but foreign, too.
She doesn't know. She doesn't know so much.
But what she knows is nothing compared to what is.
The hell of of the last few months. The miracle of now.
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Date: 2010-11-04 11:35 pm (UTC)Grief, loss, heartbreak, emptiness -- concepts she knows intimately and yet still she can't begin to empathize. She has her vices -- whiskey, bourbon, vodka ... chocolate -- but for Edward, is there escape? Release?
Distantly, it occurs to her that he's hearing all of this in the cacophony of voices invading his mind that he can never completely ward off, and she feels pressured to say something.
But there isn't anything she can say.
(Instead, she fills herself to the brim, overflowing, from the tight bud of sorrow in her heart to the inexplicable shame, as if this is all somehow her fault.)
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Date: 2010-11-05 05:01 pm (UTC)The corner of his mouth tightened and his forehead wrinkled just barely.
It's been six minutes and twelve seconds now.
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Date: 2010-11-11 04:09 am (UTC)"I hear you like playin' piano."
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Date: 2010-11-11 04:17 am (UTC)The movement is still slow.
Eyes still mostly black.
The Small striations of gold.
Of all her thoughts that had come. He stared at her with an uncanny stillness, a normality so concealed usually. Of everything, those words, without a lead up thought, had been a surprise.
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Date: 2010-11-11 04:51 am (UTC)"I can sing. It ain't much, mind you. But, my daddy used t'make me sing at home, when he'd get out his violin at night. He'd play in the parlor for the boys -- the hands that worked our property. He always used t'say, 'Music heals the soul.' Sometimes I can't even draw his image t'mind without a melody."
She smiles wanly, and at length she raises her chin to meet his eyes.
"It helps. Sometimes." And, even quieter yet: "Would you play?"
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Date: 2010-11-11 05:03 am (UTC)Edward's shoulder shifted, uncertainly.
He half glanced toward his shoulder, the door on.
"You don't--" Edward's voice felt rusty. "--have to do this."
"Jasper would understand."
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Date: 2010-11-12 11:15 pm (UTC)"I ain't doin' this for Jasper."
Her voice comes soft and firm, like the wind through the reeds.
"I'm doin' it 'cuz I want to."
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Date: 2010-11-13 08:04 pm (UTC)"What did your father play?"
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Date: 2010-11-13 08:16 pm (UTC)That's more than a start; it's enough.
"Beethoven," she smiles thinly. "Vivaldi; Brahms; Paganini. Everything. You ever heard Sally Goodin? Or Cattle in the Cain? We'd have parties in the fall after harvestin', and I'd dance for hours while he played."
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Date: 2010-11-14 03:27 pm (UTC)It gets a little lost once or twice. He counts the minutes more often. But he ends up thinking about the whole idea. Lives with music that didn't come from cds and radios. A world where it hadn't been so disconnected.
"People used to do so much more with music."
He'd come from a time much closer to hers.
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Date: 2010-11-16 11:37 pm (UTC)"They'd let you into their world."
Every melody a gateway to a thought, a vision, an experience without any other means of expression.
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Date: 2010-11-17 02:40 pm (UTC)Slips. Slides. Into. Would you play?
Would you give me your world. Would you set it free.
Would you let someone, who can't, try to understand.
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Date: 2010-11-19 08:42 pm (UTC)She thinks of the little music box in her room -- the bronze grasshopper that plays the Kreutzer Sonata on its wings.
She thinks of when she was small, the smell of pinewood sharp in her nostrils as she leans against the doorjamb, sneaking glances through the crack in the door to her father's study on nights when he'd play in private.
(She thinks of blood, so much blood, dust sticking to the soles of his boots mottled where his spilled life formed the bond, lifeless fingertips still calloused from gut strings.)
She thinks of France.
And she closes her eyes.
(And breathes.)
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Date: 2010-11-19 08:57 pm (UTC)She's so young for feeling so old.
And it's wrong to feel comforted by that.
He probably wouldn't be entirely mistaken that it's part of what drew Jasper to her, he thinks, when he turned his head fractionally to survey her. Closed eyes and closed mind to the whole world. Except for him. And she knew it.
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Date: 2010-11-19 09:42 pm (UTC)She cracks her eyes open to watch the last of the fire die from the sky, ripples of gold on the lake. There are a hundred questions dancing on her tongue; and there are a hundred more waiting in the wings.
And there is nothing. Nothing but the steady beat
thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump
that reminds her she's still here.
"They... reminded you. You're not the only one. Who makes music."
That's what life is.
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Date: 2010-11-19 09:47 pm (UTC)But then he lets it go, so incredibly quietly.
"That you're not the only one who needs it."
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:01 pm (UTC)She turns at length, soulful eyes meeting the black maw -- but there is color there, like ripened wheat swaying in and out of the moonlight -- of his penetrating gaze.
She moistens her lips, and nods once so slowly it's hardly movement at all.
Cautious, her fingers just barely graze his elbow. She wouldn't dare more than that.
"Would you play?"
Would you let go?
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:16 pm (UTC)Held in just this side of too long held seconds as it happens.
As thought the words, as well as the idea, are painful to him.
But he holds, opening his eyes just before she can speak again. Can try to take back what she's said, or find a way to apologize without words even. He doesn't smile. He doesn't lie to or for her.
There is no need, no will, no way to.
If he's going to...it will bare his soul.
And he says, asks, the only thing he can, "If you'll sing."
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:33 pm (UTC)She knows this isn't easy.
She knows this isn't nearly enough.
But he's putting in effort when he doesn't have to, and she, in all her bumbling mortality, appreciates that beyond words or thoughts. She smiles wanly.
"S'a deal."
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 10:49 pm (UTC)She waits for him, and then begins the trek back to the bar in comfortable silence.
What needs to be said can wait; it can come when and how it's natural.
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:53 pm (UTC)It's been ten minutes. He could go back now.
But he'd made an offer, and had one met in return.
And maybe it's not too far off that he stares at Yrael's baby grand piano with an empty-featured stillness that made it seems almost more adversary than welcome friend.
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Date: 2010-11-19 11:29 pm (UTC)Just as his eyes wander to his door, hers linger down the hall where the infirmary lurks just out of sight, and scans the room.
"You all right with all these people?" she asks quietly.
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Date: 2010-11-19 11:39 pm (UTC)He means, in his head, but he doesn't say so out loud.
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Date: 2010-11-22 01:18 am (UTC)"All right, then."
She makes the first move toward the piano. She's small -- petite, even -- with tiny wrists and big blue eyes like a china doll's. When she's vulnerable she looks like you could break her to pieces with the tip of a feather. But she not only can be the brave one, she always will be.
She touches the polished surface and looks at Edward with a tentative smile.
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Date: 2010-11-22 04:56 pm (UTC)The one that survived, that settled, that managed.
But never here. He reached out to let his fingers barely touch the piano surface. It isn't as though he can ever forget how to play or what it means or what he has before. But he hasn't touched a piano in any world since before Bella's birthday.
It is a truth uncontested by a near century that he plays because he's already made of too many words, always in him, running through him. He had to speak in a completely different way. And as much as it would be having to speak and be heard by another, others, he'll have to hear himself, too.
His fingers trailed the side, along the edge, before he sat down.
He ran his fingers across the frame right before the keys.
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Date: 2010-11-22 11:47 pm (UTC)It's a private thing. Personal. Emotional. She understands that well enough -- as well as she can, anyway. Same as when her daddy would polish his violin; it seemed to her such a menial task, but he did it with a tenderness that bordered on reverence, something she didn't understand until he was gone and she started polishing the instrument in his absence.
She stands along the side of the piano a few paces from the keyboard, well inside his field of vision or outside of it depending on where he chooses to focus.
And gives him time to think. To reacquaint himself.
To say hello.
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Date: 2010-11-24 03:14 pm (UTC)From someone made of more than granite, not even present.
Faint shifting notes, barely pressed down, that travel little.
He knows these places. He's walked here for so long. He can't feel tired, ever, but it makes everything else exhausting. With looking up, he asked, "Did you want something specific?"
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Date: 2010-11-27 01:02 am (UTC)She flicks her eyes to his face.
There's only one song. There could only ever be one. And yet, she pauses. She considers. She gives it thought.
(She thinks of home.)
(She thinks of heartbreak.)
(She thinks of death.)
((It's all the same.))
"Ah," she clears her throat, swallows hard (chokes back emotion, bites down on pain). "Most'a what I know accompanies fiddle. 'Less, of course, y'wanted a lively tune -- but I reckon the mood's not right."
She wets her lips.
"See if y'can follow this, perhaps?"
It's tearing open a fresh scab and salving it within the same motion. She sings quietly.
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Date: 2010-11-27 04:53 am (UTC)But he's not them, he can do better.
Because he doesn't need her to lead him, Edward starts playing at the same second as her voice sounds. Playing first from the memory's tune, each one made for and of stringed instruments. That shifts in register and key to match and mingle with the exact placement of her tone before the first line is through.
It's almost too easy. It's blessing....and a curse.
Because he doesn't have to think about the playing.
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Date: 2010-11-27 05:09 am (UTC)He's gifted, truly.
But does he enjoy it? Her eyes linger on his face, rather than on his hands.
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Date: 2010-11-27 05:27 am (UTC)He was good before this life. He plays prodigy enough now.
But not today. Today. He is simply Edward.
Not dead. Not whole. Only certain of a few things.
He doesn't owe anything here, but he still isn't free.
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Date: 2010-11-27 05:42 am (UTC)And will you never cut the cloth
Or drink the light to be
And can you never swear a year
To anyone but we?
Today is not that day.
She closes her eyes.
And suddenly she changes the tune.
She might even smile as she does so.
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Date: 2010-11-27 05:59 am (UTC)The smallest bit of surprise, perhaps.
Older, but not too old.
But something few people in the room would recognize.
And there are so many new and old things that need fixing.
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Date: 2010-11-27 06:26 am (UTC)She can't fathom the depth of his experience, the years he's stretched on, the trials -- victories and defeats, new and old -- kept within his memory.
But, for a moment, she can at least stand beside him.
But, by long absence your truth has been tried,
Still to your accents I listen with pride,
Blessed as I was when I sat by your side.
Long, long ago, long ago.