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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats

You find yourself at the theatre.

You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.

There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.

A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

Observer’s Overture

First Movement in E Minor

adagio, con dolore
PP

Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.

Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.

vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P

The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.

Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.

Opera Infernale

Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)

chorale concerto a tutti, con affetto

F

Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.

segue

Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.

segue

On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.

CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor

There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him.

Ensemble's Lament

Third Movement in G Minor

bocca chiusa
PPP

There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.

pesante

Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.

declamando, letando

There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.

The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…

freddo, pietoso

Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.

Reprise - Observer’s Overture

Fourth Movement in E Major

impetuoso
FF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.

presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.

Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.

Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.

The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.

Homeward Aria

Fifth and Final Movement in C Major

tiempo di fanfara, vittorioso
F

When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.

It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.

enfatico, mancando poco a poco

| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |

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"I don't remember, but I suppose it must be." Once begun it seems he can't stop touching Erik; he slides his hand down Erik's arm before leaning closer to fully wrap his arms around his chest. He doesn't hesitate to give Erik his full weight; he knows he can handle it.

"Being in that opera was like sleeping nude under a thick blanket, and suddenly having it ripped away. Or being tossed into a cold bath...I could feel every second of terror. If the Kin had turned against us in their thousands, Andrey and I would have been run out of town again, just as we were run out of Rome, Vienna, Madrid...and the Polyhedron would have died in its womb. I couldn't bear the thought. I couldn't even consider it. And then when the first outbreak of Sand Plague began...I think a part of me suspected that Andrey and I had done something terrible, when we sank the Polyhedron's foundation into the Earth. After that, I scarcely did anything but paint and drink."

At last, he starts to soften to the touch by lightly stroking the back of Pyotr's head as he accepts the man's weight against him.

"In a way," Erik murmurs sympathetically, "you were run out of your own mind instead." Hiding in his cups seems to have been no less miserable as far as Erik can tell.

"What will you do with this tribute you are building? Do you intend to repent?"

Pyotr hums quietly in agreement, leaning into Erik's hand like a large and ill-fed cat. Oh, the physical contact actually feels better like this? Surprising, but it makes sense. He's not fighting to ignore his own guilt and bad memories like this...right now, he doesn't feel guilty at all, and while the memories are still there...without the usual pack of painful emotions to accompany them, they're easier to ignore. Will he feel guilty about that later, he wonders? Fine, it'll make more materials for the memorial.

"I'll keep it with me, if I'm allowed," he absently explains. "The demons have been taking everything else I make, but it's taking so long to finish the memorial that maybe they'll forget about me. I'll take it home and put it in the corner of my studio, where it can watch me work. It will hurt, but it's a deserved pain. I won't anesthetize myself this time."

Even if it would be so very easy, with this new ability of his...he could make a dozen memorials if he wished. He could construct a tomb and fill it with an army of Farkhads, like that Chinese king.

"This time?"

There's something that's been eating at Erik through this entire conversation, and he's finally able to put a finger on it... or rather it's absence. He's more than aware of Pyotr's moods and how they physiologically effect him, he can practically tell time by the way the man's heart will speed or slow through certain topics. It's steady now. Too steady.

"Pyotr, what have you done? What is this material and why are aiding the demons in tormenting us?"

"Compared to when he first died, I mean. I won't try to hide from him in the bottom of a bottle."

His heart remains steady, but his breathing does pause for a moment in blunted surprise, as he considers Erik's accusation.

"Am I aiding them? I don't see how. They're just statues."

"That is good to hear. I would not allow you to do so."

Still... something about the answer doesn't soothe him the way it should. It's not that he thinks it a lie, just that something is still not... as it should be.

"They act as his guard. They are animate. You really did not know, did you?" That, he has no trouble believing.

"You did not answer my question, Pyotr. What are they made of?"

"If we go on like this, we'll run out of things for you to do," is what he wanted to say, and it would have been a genuine gesture of amusement -- even affection. But of course Erik would not permit him to avoid a direct question for long.

"On the island, I would just dump them in out of the way places when they were finished. I didn't care about keeping them..." But that's not what Erik really wants to know, is it?

He knows what he's supposed to say -- and he doubts Erik's going to appreciate it as much as he does. The temptation to misdirect is overwhelming...but he knows, doesn't he, that Erik would never let him get away with that. Don't they know each other well enough by now to accept that as a basic fact?

It still takes him several long seconds to actually answer.

"Emotions. They're made of my emotions."

Erik has gone deathly still in Pyotr's arms. Not a whisper of movement, not even breath. His emotions. His emotions? Erik knew, didn't he, that Pyotr suffers but this? This is more dangerous than self mutilation. And harder to fix. The first step to becoming a true, irreversible monster is to forsake emotions. To do that is to forsake humanity.

His chest moves only enough to draw breath to speak. He does not blink as he looks Pyotr in the face with cold eye. "You do not know what you've done."

"But I do," Pyotr quietly insists. His arms had slipped away as Erik turned to face him, they hang empty in the air for a moment before falling, limp, to his sides. "It's not a permanent state," he tries to explain. "Every emotion I tear out grows back after twenty-four hours, like the rules that govern death. I tested it thoroughly, and..."

He shrinks a step back, giving Erik a faintly accusing look as if bracing for his reaction. "I've been doing this to myself for a month now, and it never bothered you before."

Erik's expression collapses into a smooth, pale mask. It's the only way he knows to keep himself from exploding on the man. A month? A month?? All this time, Erik thought it was a sign of healing. He thought the man was calming through natural means. He never dreamed it could be... this.

"How long were you going to keep doing this without telling me?"

"Indefinitely," he whispers, shrinking back still further. Would that he could shrink still further, slip into the wallpaper perhaps and thus avoid this confrontation. "I didn't see any reason to tell you. I thought you might object -- but it's helping me. Even if you find it unsavory, you must be able to see that."

"It isn't helping anything," he snaps sharply. The way Pyotr shrinks away drives a stake right through his heart but he cannot soften his tone. Not about this. "You knew I would object. I do object to this. But I do not think you understand why. You certainly can't appreciate it, not in this state." Disgust pinches his eyebrows closer together, the first crack in his mask.

"I really thought I could teach you better, but you are too eager to throw away that which makes you human, that which I have clung to for a thousand years praying I would never lose my grasp--and here you are trading it away like trash. Nothing good can come of this. Nothing."

"So you really thought anything good could from me?" Pyotr laughs humorlessly. "I would apologize but I really don't know where you acquired that misapprehension." Even the pretense of mirth falls from his face as he stares at Erik, saying sadly, "I tried to be honest with you about what I was. Is it any fault of mine that you weren't listening?"

Edited 2025-05-30 00:57 (UTC)

"Of course I did," Erik says shaking his head sadly.

"I heard you, but I did not believe you that weak. I thought, If I could become anything good, then so could you. Had I listened to myself the night I got these"--in the blink of an eye, he's moved to have his back bared to Pyotr, naked scars on display--"I wouldn't be here now to admonish you. Look hard, and tell me you still think I could not understand your pain?"

"Is this why you never allowed me to see your back?" Overcoming his hesitation, Pyotr draws closer; if Erik will allow it, he'll even try to touch the lines of his scars. "If you'd shown me this earlier...but it hardly matters. I'm not like you, Erik. I've always known that you were the far stronger of the two of us."

"There are very few who have ever seen these. Fewer still are alive. I would not have shown you sooner even if you had asked." Usually, that privilege is earned. Perhaps the very fact that he can use them now, as a tool to prove a point, to keep Pyotr in the moment, means that his own healing has truly begun.

"Please, Pyotr, touch them gently," he warns. It isn't that they bring any physical discomfort, but the mental anguish is enough.

Still, he has resolved himself to tell this story, and so he shall. "It wasn't about strength at the time. I wanted death. I had already died once and, against my will, I was brought back to become a vampire. My master forced me to kill for my first meal. She was a young girl, maybe not even yet a woman, and he fed her to me like I was a rabid dog. I still remember every moment of it, her sad cry before I savagely snuffed her life with my fangs."

Erik turns to make sure Pyotr sees the horror in his eyes, still there even now. "I hated what I had become. I hated myself, and I longed only for the eternal sleep I was denied. I refused to eat again. I starved in hopes that I would simply whither to nothing.

"That isn't how it works. I could not die, and my Master would not leave me to my own devices. So, he attempted to use pain to change my mind. These were his gifts to me. A vampire needs blood to heal, you see?"

Still, Erik wouldn't drink. No more than what his Master could force down his throat. That small amount wasn't enough to slake the bottomless hunger of a new vampire, but it was just enough to keep his mind from wholly fracturing.

"It was my twin sister who changed my mind. I could never refuse her."

His hands, spread gently across Erik's back, end up on his chest instead. Pyotr blinks down at him, frowning softly, before moving his hand to cup Erik's cheek. "You mentioned having a sister before," he says thoughtfully. "What did she do?"

Something awful, he supposes. It must be so, for him to loathe her memory in such a way. Pyotr can still recall how ferociously Erik rejected him, that time he suggested they might think of each other as surrogate siblings. He was lucky that Erik had only objected to his phrasing, not the offer of intimacy in itself.

His whole body tenses under that touch, not even loosening when Pyotr's hand finds his cheek. He cannot meet the man's eyes as he chokes out the worst of his pain.

"She killed herself, Pyotr. Right before my very eyes." He convulses, as if fighting back the urge to vomit. "I was chained to the wall, starved and too weak to break myself free to stop her. She said that if I would not stay with her on this side of the veil, then she would cross over to meet me. Our Master, my sire... he turned her to keep her from death, I watched it all helplessly. It was then that I discovered there are worse things than living a cursed life."

That isn't all there is to the story. Not even close. It's evident in the way Erik trembles like a thread pulled near to breaking.

"I only found out decades later that she planned the entire thing with our Master. She was a manipulator, selfish to her core. Anything I thought I had, she sought to steal from me. Even my own lover. Though..." his voice takes on that acidic edge it always has when he speaks of his past with her. "In that she offered to share. I suppose, because I caught her in Ophelia's bed, she simply offered for me to join to keep the peace." He spits on the floor, as if to get the taste of those words out of his mouth.

"She wasn't a sibling, she was a snake in the guise of a sister. And now you know the truth."

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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

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cw: self-mutilation mention

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cw: suicidal ideation, violence/death, blood drinking, torture

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cw: suicide ideation, incest ideation, emeto ideation