MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

[pumpkinhollow]

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 |

Comments

[stoneoftherose]

"That's it," Pyotr encourages him. "Don't fight it. Just breathe and let it happen." He strokes Gaeta's throat twice more, and a lump of fluid forms in his throat. Thick and viscous, it will have no trouble triggering his gag reflex. And when he coughs it up, Pyotr's hand will be there to catch it, trapping it between his fingers and palm until it solidifies into a semi-spherical shape, the color of mercury and the size of an orange.

"This is grief," Pyotr softly declares after studying the substance for a moment -- before turning that same appraising look back on Gaeta. "So small? I think you can give me more than that."

cw: emeto, mention of past drug use

[not_a_traitor]

He gags, coughs again, tries not to lose his balance as his retching bends him over his knees. And then it's out, and...

Everything's quiet. Inside Gaeta's head, for the first time in years, there's no buzzing, no static, no weight. The vivid dimensions of his losses have been pressed flat. Just facts now, distant and analytical: my planetary system is gone. My family and friends are gone. I am dead, and all of humanity will soon follow.

It doesn't feel like the morpha did, which wrapped all his thoughts in padded cotton. The grief was still there; it just didn't hurt when he bumped into it. Now there's a hollow absence he wants to prod like tonguing the spot where a lost tooth ought to be.

It's insane. Impossible. Pyotr just reached inside him and ripped out an actual feeling. And if Gaeta gives him more, he thinks with a faint wildness, he won't even want to prod the empty spot anymore.

"Please," he begs. Even his desperation feels a bit muted, he notices. "Take the rest."

Take everything.

[stoneoftherose]

"That's the spirit," he says, and he smiles emotionlessly, out of pure, logical pleasure. "Here, lean back." He presses Gaeta back against the wall, straightening out his spine and shoulders. "Remember, don't fight it. You want me to do this."

He places his hand back on Gaeta's throat, beginning the process again anew. (And as for the lump of Gaeta's grief? That disappears into one of the inner pockets of Pyotr's coat, to be molded into some strange creature or automaton later.)

[not_a_traitor]

The reminder feels ominous at first, just short of dangerous, but the ragged space where the grief was torn out intercepted a few baser impulses, too. Fear, worry, apprehension: all their sharp edges honed by Gaeta's hypervigilance have dulled. He doesn't fight it.

But as Pyotr grasps his throat again, drawing out more of what's congealed inside him for half a decade, he realizes he may need the reminder after all. More grief first: two hundred people are dead because I trusted a Cylon. Anger, then: She betrayed me. Dr. Baltar betrayed me. Adama betrayed us. Despair: Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland. All the attendant tangles of embarrassment, paranoia, guilt, pain lodged in between like scar tissue.

As they all diminish, the want driving Gaeta's choice begins to fade as well. If a desire is powered by desperation, what happens when he coughs up that desperation into Pyotr's waiting hand?

So he does need the reminder eventually. You want him to do this.

He hardly even notices the ache in his throat after a while, as the growing silence inside his head blossoms to exhausted relief.

[stoneoftherose]

By the end of it Pyotr has removed his coat altogether and stretched it on the floor in front of Gaeta as a place to catch and contain the silver that pours from his mouth (and also, as the process continues, from his mouth and eyes, silver tears that do not sting but may feel strangely heavy before Pyotr carefully wipes them from his face). He smiles, looking at Gaeta with something very close to admiration.

"Well done," he says quietly. "I'll make something beautiful from all of this."

[not_a_traitor]

And he feels...

Well. He doesn't feel much of anything. That's the point. Though physically, it's like Pyotr twisted all his sinews until he wrung every drop of liquid from his body. Gaeta's head swims, he can't quite catch his breath, but he feels so light. There's nothing left in him but necessity. Only what he needs to keep his body going, unencumbered.

He coughs one last time, weakly, and sags, noting the lack of pain as he moves. Not entirely -- his leg and his throat still hurt -- but it's so much more bearable all of a sudden without everything else in the way. Gods, is this what other people feel like? He would cry with relief, he thinks distantly, if he still had any desire to cry.

Idly, he rubs his throat, fingers worrying at the scar. He looks down at the enormous silver... puddle? Pile? To think one person could carry all of that inside them and not even know until they were free of it.

"I think you'll use it better than I will," he croaks.

[stoneoftherose]

"Almost certainly," Pyotr agrees. "But I'm grateful to you, all the same." As he begins to carefully wrap up the glimmering heap with his coat, folding it into a sort of makeshift sack, he idly asks, "Any preferences for what I might make out of it? You seem like a bird sort of person, but I'm open to suggestions."

[not_a_traitor]

"Mm." He considers this. A bird would be metaphorically appropriate, he supposes: turning all that grief into something light enough to escape the confines of Gaeta's chest. But that implies any kind of escape at all. Any hope. And the simple truth that he knows, even unattached from his emotions, is that there wasn't any hope left behind so much pain.

Maybe a testament to the pain itself would be better.

"There are mechanical lifeforms where I'm from," he says, "called Cylons. One kind in particular looks more like a machine than a human. Humanoid, but obviously a robot. They're tall. Thin. The limbs and fingers are too long." Gaeta stifles another scratchy cough. "Something like that. But don't make it beautiful. Make it ugly."

[stoneoftherose]

"Ugly?" Pyotr considers this for a moment. "Yes, I think I can do that. Interesting. Thank you again for your contributions, Mr...It was Gaeta, wasn't it?"

[not_a_traitor]

"Gaeta, yes."

And there's more he could say, but that's when the shades finally locate him to herd him back into the orchestra pit. Like everything else, it hardly seems worth putting up a fight about it any longer. So he goes.

(For the rest of the night, the vocals rising from the pit seem... flatter than they were before. Not in pitch, but in quality. Nothing but a series of notes loosely joined together. The emotion belongs to Pyotr's art now, not Gaeta's.)

After Efrain's defeat, he passes a pleasant enough night atop Crane's Ridge, then takes the train down the mountainside once it starts running again. The twelve or so hours that follow occur at a distance, but a comfortable one; he continues to have no pressing concerns beyond the immediate needs of his body. What a marvel, to simply exist.

If only it could last.

When the weight returns, it's horrific. He barely sleeps at all for the constriction in his lungs, his thoughts racing so fast it makes him physically nauseous. Normally when it's this bad, he'd go to Mulcahy's house, but this time -- this time, it occurs to him that someone else lives much closer.

Which means at four in the morning, Pyotr gets a rapid-fire knock on his door.

[stoneoftherose]

It doesn't take much to get Pyotr drunk these days, but it doesn't take much to wake him up, either. His sleep is shallow and gunshy, easily shattered by the knocking on his door, but it still takes him a long moment to muster the will to actually climb out of his bathtub and answer it. Maybe this is retribution for his sins, he considers somewhat whimsically, as he follows the walls of his flat back to the front door and, leaning heavily against its frame, fumbles the locks and latch into opening.

"Oh, it's you," he murmurs, squinting at the wavering and overlapping figures of Gaeta in his doorway. "Are you here to castigate me for the violation, or request a repeat of the experience?"

[not_a_traitor]

"The latter."

The room behind Pyotr reeks -- and so does Pyotr's breath, frankly -- but Gaeta hardly notices. He's gripping the other side of the doorframe almost as hard as Pyotr, knuckles pale and fingertips trembling.

"Please." Rapid and desperate. "I can't sleep. I can't think. It's too much. Whatever you did, if you can do it again -- please."

[stoneoftherose]

"I don't know if I can," he sighs. "But I'll try. Come on." He turns away from the door, carelessly leaving it open for Gaeta to enter or leave as he pleases, and follows the wall back to his couch, where he slumps like a pile of clothes swept off their hanger.

[not_a_traitor]

No.

Relief so close, but in danger of slipping through his fingers. Gods, where has he heard that one before.

He put on his leg, but didn't grab his cane before coming upstairs; he has to brace himself on the wall too as he follows Pyotr to the couch, his limp far more pronounced than usual. "Please," he hears himself say again in a whisper. "Please."

When he sits, he hunches into a tense ball, like he's ready to spring back to his feet at the slightest provocation. It cuts quite a contrast next to Pyotr's loose-limbed slouch.

[stoneoftherose]

Pyotr sighs deeply; he'd almost been hoping Gaeta would give up and turn away. It will be a great blow to him too, if this doesn't work.

"All right..." With a shift of his own weight, oddly laborious for one so thin, he changes to the direct of his slumping to blanket Gaeta from neck to hip, his head resting on Gaeta's shoulder as he throws an arm around him and with the other, begins to rub at Gaeta's chest. "We'll try it like this," he sighs. "Be ready to catch it if anything comes out."

[not_a_traitor]

Well. This is... not what he expected. Not even just the way Pyotr drapes himself over Gaeta in the most excruciatingly awkward way possible; all the confidence and quiet command of before has left the man, smothered the same way Gaeta's self-assurance died on the vine as his anxiety regrew.

He flinches a little at the hand on his chest. (Thinks, for a split second, of Mulcahy, and wonders --

No. Gods, he just needs to sleep, what use will he be to anyone if he can't even do that?)

"Okay," he manages, and cups his hands like a parody of prayer, waiting, hoping it'll work.