When ORIN leaves, then FEVER twitches again. Starts to pull herself, inch by agonizing inch, across the stage. Still alive, despite ORIN's best efforts. For now. The orchestra, as if (mocking/soothing) her, plays a slow, melancholy refrain of the motif in her aria, a reminder of what was before. So much still to do.
And then it is dark, and she can see again, but she is not released yet. Not until she's at the Green Room, the demonic knowing that to let her up any earlier risks her filling the stage with lightning-acid-flame-ice-thunder-disintegration, that she'd strike back as retribution for the rage that still fills her.
There are no wounds. There is no tadpole. There is blood, but she couldn't say who it belongs to.
There's just her and red in the corner of her vision, someone, something brought out as a puppet -
And though this costume is tailored to her, the robes she had awoken into consciousness with, they suddenly feel constricting, suffocating, rough and wrong on her skin. And Fever is tearing them off like they're burning her, with her freedom restored. Movements of the possessed in their violence, those who rend their clothing in grief, in anguish, as a substitute for tearing at flesh. Fabric shreds, falls away, off off off until she's standing there in corset and chemise, uncaring who sees her as long as she's free.
Gods, they all saw. They all saw. They all saw and they will know and they will click their tongues in sweet sympathy because they only know what they saw and they will not understand that they needed to avert their eyes for shame. Rows and rows in an operating theater, gazing at the unconscious body, cut open for every prying eye and opinion to look and see. They do not understand.
(Deep breath. Count. One, two, three of them. Pressing into her skin just enough that the weight anchors her to the ground.)
Her fingers find something on a dressing table - Fever could not say what it was, other than it had enough heft in her grip that when she locks eyes with herself in the mirror, she throws it as hard as she can. And after all her weapons training, her studious application towards controlling her body, it is not an insignificant force.
It connects, and the mirror shatters, and the sound of it - piercing/sharp/faintly musical/clattering/ruin in so many shining shards - is a small relief. Enough that she finds herself pulled back from the edge of screaming. Her hands creep up to press against the back of her skull anyway, fingertips finding the familiar scar under her hair. Now she knows. Now she knows. Chest rising and falling like she sprinted across the isle.
(Now you know the fate you would not save her from. Necessary. Total oblivion.)
Slowly, so slowly, she turns in the direction of the puppet-who-was-ORIN. Recognizes that face. All illusions and madness, in the grip of Sorrow's Song. (To embrace madness is to be touched by it more deeply, strength and shattering alike.) And yet she is the one who has to lower her eyes, as humiliation twists like silk cords around her throat.
Speech feels impossible. What do you even say, in a time like this?
no subject
And then it is dark, and she can see again, but she is not released yet. Not until she's at the Green Room, the demonic knowing that to let her up any earlier risks her filling the stage with lightning-acid-flame-ice-thunder-disintegration, that she'd strike back as retribution for the rage that still fills her.
There are no wounds. There is no tadpole. There is blood, but she couldn't say who it belongs to.
There's just her and red in the corner of her vision, someone, something brought out as a puppet -
And though this costume is tailored to her, the robes she had awoken into consciousness with, they suddenly feel constricting, suffocating, rough and wrong on her skin. And Fever is tearing them off like they're burning her, with her freedom restored. Movements of the possessed in their violence, those who rend their clothing in grief, in anguish, as a substitute for tearing at flesh. Fabric shreds, falls away, off off off until she's standing there in corset and chemise, uncaring who sees her as long as she's free.
Gods, they all saw. They all saw. They all saw and they will know and they will click their tongues in sweet sympathy because they only know what they saw and they will not understand that they needed to avert their eyes for shame. Rows and rows in an operating theater, gazing at the unconscious body, cut open for every prying eye and opinion to look and see. They do not understand.
(Deep breath. Count. One, two, three of them. Pressing into her skin just enough that the weight anchors her to the ground.)
Her fingers find something on a dressing table - Fever could not say what it was, other than it had enough heft in her grip that when she locks eyes with herself in the mirror, she throws it as hard as she can. And after all her weapons training, her studious application towards controlling her body, it is not an insignificant force.
It connects, and the mirror shatters, and the sound of it - piercing/sharp/faintly musical/clattering/ruin in so many shining shards - is a small relief. Enough that she finds herself pulled back from the edge of screaming. Her hands creep up to press against the back of her skull anyway, fingertips finding the familiar scar under her hair. Now she knows. Now she knows. Chest rising and falling like she sprinted across the isle.
(Now you know the fate you would not save her from. Necessary. Total oblivion.)
Slowly, so slowly, she turns in the direction of the puppet-who-was-ORIN. Recognizes that face. All illusions and madness, in the grip of Sorrow's Song. (To embrace madness is to be touched by it more deeply, strength and shattering alike.) And yet she is the one who has to lower her eyes, as humiliation twists like silk cords around her throat.
Speech feels impossible. What do you even say, in a time like this?