• The music is for the second half of this chapter. You'll know when. •
A year. That's how long it had taken him to find a way out of Kuwait.
"After they gave up on me..." He was far away again, head dropped as he recounted the story that was his brutal start to a new life. "After the government told me they couldn't do anything for me... I went my own way."
"You found your own way home," I whispered.
"They wouldn't grant me a passport since there was no proof other than my language that I was American," He shook his head. "It wasn't enough. I could've been a sleeper agent or a terrorist waiting to be launched into action..."
We were sitting on the couch again, me in my armchair, him on our white couch. We were getting somewhere. He was talking. I was breathing. But for how long?
He wasn't wearing his trench coat for once, nor his boots. To an outsider, he almost looked... normal. Like a regular person. A cup of tea stood in front of him, a cup he tiredly reached for and sipped.
"I did what I had to do," He shifted, running a hand through his hair. "I got in touch with people who could get me to the States. Work was their price."
I wasn't going to ask what work he had done. I knew it wasn't herding sheep or stacking bread baskets in an idyllic village somewhere. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask. He did what he had to do. It was in the past now.
"And then... you got to New York?" I asked. It was another large question of mine; Fifty States. Had he drawn from a hat or had he chosen? If so, how? And why?
Tony slowly moved and looked out of the window, glancing out at the city. It was overcast, melancholic, light rain drizzling down, but even so, I knew he saw the same as me.
"This city..." His voice grated along the syllables. His eyes seemed to deepen as he stared out at his home, the place his heart had called out to. "People come here to find themselves... to make themselves something..."
And he had come here for the same reason. Thousands of people arrived to the city daily. Billboards, nightlife, voices, faces, souls everywhere. So much possibility. So much life.
And there he walked, a dead man.
I swallowed dryly. "You've been wandering the streets for seven years..." I saw his eyes slowly shift and lower to the floor again, the shadows casting over his face. "That night... at the club. In the alley... was that the first time you..." Found something. I couldn't get the final words out.
"I'd given up." His voice expelled the empty words like leftover air. "I was so close to just..." His head lowered to his chest, and I noticed he had shut his eyes. He had been so close to ending it. "I was already dead. Nobody knew me. Not even myself. That's when I heard it." My gaze dropped to his palm and saw it slowly curl to a fist. "That sound."
Like choreographed, we both turned our heads towards the suitcase. On top of it laid the violin, silent as tools were until they were used.
"Something snapped," He glared at the instrument as if he was expecting it to laugh at his statement. Something might've snapped, but not the strings. Even under his torture. "I knew that sound belonged to me. It was in the wrong hands, and I just... couldn't..."
"You stole it," I watched him grit his teeth, his face hardening. He had stolen it to study it, to figure out why the tool compelled something inside him.
It spoke to the dead.
"That night in the subway was my first... the first time I..." His lips shut and he now stared at the tool, anger lighting up in his eyes; The first time he had played it in this lifetime perhaps, but it wasn't telling him how he learned to play it in his previous. Always mocking him with answers, just beyond reach.
"You're musical," My voice spoke up, clearing as I emptied it with a deep breath. "We can use that."
"To visit schools?" His words were bathed in mockery.
"Not just any," I said, staring at him. "Juilliard."
His eyes flared up and met mine like a fist. Juilliard was the best school in the country to study music. Only the best of the best got a chance to go there. Prodigies before him, musical virtuosos... geniuses. Like them, I truly believed Tony was one. He belonged with the greats of this world. He could do something only a few people could do. When he held his violin, he wasn't just playing chords. He wasn't just making sound or even expressing emotions. It was much more than that.
When he closed his eyes and put the bow to the strings, something happened. It was as if he melted into the very fabric the world was made up of and started unraveling the threads, picking them one by one and transporting them back into the real world. The strands he took back each held a piece of the earth's music, and with a few swift tweaks on his instrument, he could weave them into the bleeding shrieks I had been blessed enough to hear. Feelings.
Talent like that couldn't be taught. It had to come from his very heart and soul, but maybe he had tried to nourish it. Before the war, before everything crashed and burned... he might've fought with music before he fought with the world.
"Will you come with me?" I looked at him, my soul pleading. He looked back at me, his eyes burning with a dying flame. He was tired. Since Blue, he hadn't had another breakthrough. So much, yet so little.
"Melody..." He turned his head away and cupped it. His soul was so tired.
"Please." I reached out, laying my hand on his knee. I let my soul charge his. Asked him to be strong for just a little while longer. He looked down, staring at my knuckles, watching them for minutes, counting the faint lines on my skin. I almost told myself I could hear his heart's slow beat. Thud thud... Thud thud... thud...
Then, slowly, he let his hand drop on top of mine. Pale against dark; The contrast was strong, yet as his white palm grasped mine, I felt his darkness surround me.
A faint nod was his answer. It was followed by the demons he let seep from his chest as he exhaled all of the air inside his body.
Into war we went.
~~~
The afternoon was a wet affair that dusted over the city in the shape of a light rain as its inhabitants worked its way through it. They were heading towards their next destination, always moving forward.
And in the midst of it all, we stood. Standstill. Frozen. Two mismatched puzzle pieces out of time.
The Juilliard school of New York City was as much of an outsider as us with its odd design and sleek, gray, crooked exterior; The work of great artistry, the home to artists. The building in itself spoke volumes.
But, as my head turned up and stared at Tony, I knew from the somber look in his eyes that it was utterly mute to him.
"Come on." Reaching out for his hand was the boldest thing I had done yet. I was almost afraid of the rejection. That my hand, hovering in the air, would remain empty as I looked up at him, pleadingly. He didn't move. I didn't expect him to.
I defeatedly lowered my hand and started walking forward, hoping he would follow. I had barely made it two steps before I felt something clench around my arm and hold me back. I turned and found Tony's calloused hand wrapped around my arm. His knuckles were pale, but no paler than his face. He stared up at the building, his teeth gritted tightly. Breathe in, breathe out. Control.
He moved forward, taking the lead. Always the conductor. I stayed a step behind him and followed him inside. Anyone could tell we didn't belong. We were outsiders, yet still... I watched Tony and saw him look around, his brows pinching. He searched. He looked for something familiar. Anything. When his eyes slowly closed and his lips pressed together, I knew it was another dead end.
But I wasn't giving up just yet.
"Follow me." I waited till he met my eyes, hard. They were like steel, piercing through mine. That's when I realized I had commanded him this time. He didn't like it. My own blood froze up and I stopped breathing, watching him consume me with his eyes and regain control again. I couldn't break free.
His seas of blue then suddenly snapped away when a sound pierced the lobby. I heard it too. It came from down a hall and it wasn't quiet; It was loud, melodious, and it was talking to him.
Turning, he abandoned me and marched forward, like nothing could come between him and the sound. I ran after him, my legs trembling as I watched his determined prowl. Thump, thump, thump. His boots echoed against the polished floors as he chased down the sound. Thump, thump, thump.
He went down a staircase. I jogged behind him. I had never seen him so driven, so focused. It was then I realized... he wasn't walking there himself. He was being dragged.
Something inside him had woken up, and as he broke through a door that stood slightly ajar and then abruptly stopped up, I finally caught his eyes and saw it.
They were right there, in the moment, and no longer caught in the past. He had been pulled to the present, and he wasn't giving it the chance to slip away from him.
Standing in the centre of a large theater—Peter Jay Sharp Theater—he stared up at an infinitely large stage with just... instruments. But they were so much more, weren't they? They were a time machine.
It seemed to slow down as he stood there. Pause. The room was eerily quiet and all that was heard was... silence. Time was mute as he caught up to the present.
But then, it was abruptly and rudely broken. A group of people poured onto the stage, laughing and talking. Students. A single man who was older than the rest of them clapped two times and ordered them to pick up where they left off. The students sat down and resumed their positions with their instruments, following orders like musical soldiers. They drew their weapons; Strings, keys, valves.
"We should go," I whispered, grasping Tony's arm as they set up for class. We had walked in without an invitation, and I doubted the class was open for an audience. "Tony..."
He was cemented to the floor when I tried to pull him. I stopped and watched him watch them with hypnotized eyes. They were completely focused, almost lethal, unblinking. He waited—watched them lift their instruments and then switched his eyes to the conductor as he flicked his wrist.
Music poured through the theater and my veins started shaking as the sounds pierced through me. It was so heartbreaking, so.... beautiful. I didn't know how to process it. My hands were trembling as I stared up at Tony, watching his expression twist as something happened. His eyes stared up at the ensemble with something similar to awe; They played for him. For the first time, he was the audience to the melodic torture.
And by the look in his eyes, it was finally speaking to him.
"Music..." His voice was a quiet whisper in the windstorm that was the symphony of notes flying in the air. His eyes had slid shut, and he wasn't here anymore... except he was. "Music can... fight the wars inside a heart... but they can't fight the wars... outside of it..."
I looked up at him and as I did, I saw it happen. And it was horrific.
Like a slap with a steel fist, something hit straight through him that made him snap his eyes open and blink rapidly. Shock—a tidal wave of it.
I watched as his lips parted with something and lifted a hand to his solar plexus, unknowingly, I suspected. Everything seemed to unravel as the music crescendoed around us, whirling around him like a storm. He hunched over and his gaze dropped to the floor. My heart leaped when a new note then suddenly struck his face—something he had never played before. It was... confusion? No, not that... it was...
"Tony?" I carefully stepped closer when I saw his eyes snap shut. Something was about to go down, and it started right now. "Tony!"
He swiveled around and then he was gone. My heart galloped and I kicked into action, running after him as he bolted from the theatre like the Devil was chasing him. Not the Devil... he wasn't scared of him. The sight of his trench coat flaring behind him was my only visual as he pounded up the stairs, heading towards the glass doors. I dashed after him, panting for my breath.
"Tony!" Once we made it out onto the street, I thought he would stop, but he didn't. He turned a sharp corner about a block down and I followed. My lungs were burning and my calves hurt. Turning the corner, my body came to an abrupt halt as I found him there, in the mouth of an alley. He had finally stopped running.
Bent against the building, he caught himself against the brick wall. With a clench of his fist, his back then hunched and his other hand came to his stomach.
Bile came up his throat and he emptied his gut right there in the alley. His body spasmed for control, but refused to give it to him as he continued retching. I stared mortified as watched his body give up, his mind finally snapping and joining with his memory.
He had remembered something. He had heard.
I was afraid to speak, afraid I would break the moment as he finally stopped throwing up and wiped his mouth down with his hand, shaking. Something had happened back there, and that something had been a memory.
Those words... there was something about them that had made him run from his past. A new sound. An echo. Suddenly it had been chasing him and suddenly it had been too much. Too real.
- His body had rejected it, the remnants laying on the ground before him.
"Tony..."
Breathing to regain his everlasting control, he exhaled through his mouth and slowly stood up. As you were, soldier. He composed himself before dragging his other hand through his hair, combing it back. With a deep exhale, I watched as he then closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.
"This was a mistake."
The gruff words were uttered harshly as he abruptly started marching away, giving me his back. I stared, dumbfound. What?
"Tony!" I quickly ran after him, my legs still shaking from before. He didn't stop for me, didn't stop as the alley started swallowing us. This couldn't be it. "Tony, stop, we can't give up—"
"We?" There it was again. That dangerous word. He stopped up and as did I, my breath halting with me.
"You..." I whispered. Fuck. "I... you can't run away when you start getting too close." He was scared. I was scared. We were all scared, but we still had to keep fighting.
Slowly, I saw his shoulders drop. It was just like the time he had led me to the hospital. 'Who are you?' I had asked. 'I don't know,' he had replied.
Now, standing so close to the truth, he was scared to find out.
"Tony..."
He turned around, his eyes landing on mine. For a split second, I felt something I thought I'd never feel—saw something within his eyes I thought he'd never give me.
But then, his eyes snapped up and landed on something behind me.
Movement stirred and made the soldier in front of me grow as taut as the strings on his violin. Something dark entered the alley and it seeped through my bones like stone cold fear. Silence before the storm...
Then, a voice behind me broke the harmony of our exclusive bubble.
"Ti dumal, chto mozhesh spryatatsya, ne tak li?"
• • •
And so it begins.
For those who didn't catch my message on my board, this chapter will be the last one for a long while. Writer's block is a bitch you can't rush, so wrap yourselves up with patience while I kill this block.
- Cheers.