TRIGGER WARNING: depression, self harm, blood, night terrors, flashbacks, panic attacks

OTHER TAGS: Levi POV, moderately slow build, past character death, lots of angst

Hey look a new fic! The title is kinda lame but Bach has a beautiful piece for two violins called 'Concerto in D Minor' so I went with it. It's kind of a more upbeat piece than is appropriate for this fic but oh well. And for any of you that follow my other fics, this one will NOT have regular weekly updates like the others. I have a couple chapters written already but not nearly as much as I usually have written before I start posting. My main focus is going to be on Freedom of the Press so I'll only be updating this one as I get around to it. I'll try not to leave too much time between updates though.

Chapter 1: Tortured Past

"In other news, we've just received word that world famous violinist, Levi Ackerman, has accepted an invitation to play as a guest concertmaster for the Shiganshina Symphony in their upcoming recitals. This is big news for the small orchestra. Levi Ackerman played as first chair violinist in his first professional level orchestra at the tender age of nine, and has only grown greater since. He was the youngest to ever graduate from Sina Institute for the Fine Arts, a very prestigious private university, at the age of fifteen and immediately joined the Karanese Orchestra as concertmaster. He played with Karanese for three short years before becoming a solo musician. He has played in hundreds of concerts all over the world and has played as a guest violinist with dozens of orchestral groups. He's won numerous awards, not only for his great talent with a violin, but for his beautiful compositions as well. Conductor, Erwin Smith, expresses his great pleasure at being granted this opportunity to work with Mr. Ackerman, and-" CLICK.

I set the remote down on the hotel nightstand. I had just accepted that invitation yesterday afternoon before my flight to Trost. That news sure traveled quickly. It was with great reluctance that I accepted the invitation. Shiganshina is a very small city, with a very new orchestra. They're still trying to grow, so they are still small in numbers and low in talent. But my agent, Hanji, insisted that I accept the invitation. She said it would make for good public relations, and show that I care about the advancement of these smaller, up-and-coming groups. Sure, whatever.

Picking up my violin- my pride and joy, my heart and soul, the most precious thing in my life- I head out of the small hotel room. I have two days here in Trost, one rehearsal day and then one concert tomorrow night, and then I'll be on my way to Shiganshina. Usually when I play as a guest musician, it's only for one or two recitals, and I'm never there for longer than a few days. But as this invitation is for me to play as their concertmaster, I'll be there for a lot longer. I'm not really looking forward to that. I much prefer traveling. If I stay in one place too long, my surroundings become too familiar, and my mind starts to turn inwards on itself, bringing my depression to the forefront and recalling memories that I'd much rather forget. Hanji says that Shiganshina recently lost their concertmaster, so she thinks they're going to try and offer me a permanent position once I get to play with the group for a while. But I highly doubt it. One, I haven't accepted a permanent position in over a decade, so what makes them think I'd accept one now? And for a small, low talent orchestra no less? Two, they would never be able to afford my rates. Their location doesn't bring in enough of an audience to be able to make the profit needed to hire me permanently. I'm surprised they can even afford my rates for the three weeks I'll be there as a guest.

I hitch my small backpack more securely on my shoulder and grip the handle of my violin carefully at my side as I ride the elevator down to the ground floor. I tug on the long sleeves of my light grey button down out of habit as the doors open and I enter the lobby. Heading straight out to the street, I hail a cab and give the cab driver the address to Trost's concert hall.

I watch the tall buildings and sprawling city fly by out the windows. I hold my violin tenderly in my lap to cushion it from the rough ride of the cab. I started playing the violin when I was three. My father was a violinist, and he started teaching me to play the second I could hold the bulky thing. I fell in love with it from the first note, and I bugged my father constantly to give me lessons. If I wasn't in school, I was at home playing my old, beat up, hand-me-down violin. My mother had died giving birth to me, so I had always been close with my father, and I think that playing the violin had made us even closer. He was my best friend, after my violin of course. So when he was killed in a mugging when I was seven, I was completely lost. I dove even further into my playing, even going so far as to neglect my schoolwork and taking care of myself so that I'd have more time to play. I used the tragedy to fuel my passion for playing the violin. The music suddenly became more passionate, more beautiful, more full of meaning. And I never wanted the music to stop. I shuffled from foster home to foster home, none of my foster parents able to handle taking care of me. I wasn't a problem child, I just shut the rest of the world out so I could focus on my violin.

When I was nine, I played in a school talent show. Apparently the conductor of the Rose Orchestra, a professional level orchestral group, was in the audience, and after the show, he hunted me down to offer me a position as first violinist for his orchestra. I accepted, because that meant that I could play my violin all the time without anyone telling me to stop. So as a child protégé, I played with the Rose Orchestra for the most wonderful year of my life after my father had died. But then my foster parents gave me up and I had to move.

I heard about Sina Institute of the Fine Arts from a newspaper one day during my freshman year of high school. The article had been talking about the most prestigious schools for musicians. Sina had recently passed up Julliard as the best music school in the country, and I was determined to go there. I immediately sent in an audition tape, and got a quick response telling me that I had been accepted. Just like that, I was on the road to living a life of music. I'd never be told to put my violin down again.

My three years at Sina were some of my best years, and also one of my worst. Although I was completely withdrawn from everyone when I first started attending, I soon became close friends with a cellist, Isabel, and her brother, Farlan, who played the piano. They introduced me to their friends Petra, Eld, Gunther, and Oluo. The seven of us became inseparable. Even though I was considerably younger than all of them, they never treated me like a child, or any different. We went everywhere together, we practiced together, we played in our own group together. They were my family where I had gone so long without one. My first two years at the Institute with them are memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

But during my third and final year, the slimy hands of fate dipped into my life and ripped them all away from me. One night, they all decided that they wanted to go into town to see the Sina Philharmonic Orchestra perform. I tried to convince them to go the following night because I had to practice for my performance exam the next morning. But I was unsuccessful. The seven of us piled into Farlan's car and headed into town. We never made it to the hall. A drunk driver driving the wrong way on the highway collided head on with our car. Farlan and Eld, being in the front seats, died on impact. Gunther, Oluo, and Petra being in the row in front of me, didn't make it until the ambulances started showing up. Isabel and I had been in the back row, and I held her hand as the paramedics cut us out of the car. She died that night in surgery.

Not a day goes by that I don't wish that I had died in that car crash with my friends, with my family. I still remember, clear as day, as if it were living through it again, Isabel's voice as she cried and asked me if I was okay. I remember as if she were whispering it in my ear, her trying to call out to the others. I remember, as if it were tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, the sight of my friends mangled and broken bodies as the paramedics pulled me from that car.

My playing took a drastic turn after the accident. Just like when I lost my father, I shut myself in with my violin. Even in the hospital with a broken arm, three broken fingers on my bow hand, and a shattered rotator cuff, I still played my violin. The nurses couldn't keep it from me. If they did, I'd refuse to eat, refuse to sleep, refuse to do anything. I had even tried to kill myself. When I was alone, I ripped my IV from my arm and used the needle to slice my wrists open. I was obviously unsuccessful, and the staff realized quickly that the only way to keep me alive would be to give me my violin. My playing took a dark turn. Again, I channeled all my negative emotion, all my sorrow, all my grief, into the strings of my violin. My loss fueled my passion. Every time I picked up my violin for the next year, I couldn't get through a whole piece without crying.

Once I graduated Sina, the youngest to ever graduate from that institute, my obsession with my violin didn't stop. I played for Karanese Orchestra for a few years before I realized that I didn't want to play in a group permanently anymore. It reminded me too much of playing with my friends. I needed to play by myself, where my sound was the only sound that echoed through the hall, where the audience could feel my grief, my anguish, my loss. My passion. I needed them to know how much I was hurting. But no one ever understood. I knew they wouldn't. They'd always applaud at the end of every performance, cheering for my heartache, praising my pain, admiring my suffering.

It wasn't until after I left Karanese that my depression became a numbing, blinding force. My playing took a severe plummet, and I knew why. My grief had began to numb over time. The tragedy of my loss was starting to fade. I was losing the source of my passion. Despite the dulling of my sorrow though, my night terrors and flashbacks grew worse. Every night I would wake in a cold sweat, images of the crash still prevalent behind my eyes. I slowly became an insomniac. Not only did I not want to sleep anymore, but I couldn't sleep. The fear of those haunting images coming back full force kept me awake most of the night. As my depression grew stronger and my playing grew weaker, I realized that I needed a new way to fuel my passion or else I'd lose it all, and I couldn't let that happen. My playing kept my father, Isabel, Farlan, Petra, Oluo, Eld, and Gunther alive. They all lived on through my violin. If I lost my playing, I'd lose all of them all over again.

One particularly bad night, as I struggled to play my violin at three in the morning, I threw the instrument aside in frustration. I felt so worthless and so pitiful. I wanted it to end. I wanted the pain to go away. I dragged my nails across the skin of my wrists in sheer self hatred. I scratched so hard that I bled. It was in the rivulets of crimson snaking down my arms that I found my answer. Something just snapped in my mind. A fire sparked, a fire fueled solely on my own pain and agony. I picked up my violin and I played better than I had in all my life. I quickly realized, with blood running down my arms and dripping onto the carpet, that I needed to refresh my pain. I needed to feel my pain again. Now, I can't pick up my violin without first slicing my arm open and releasing that flow of grief. It was hard at first, figuring out how to cover up the blood and the cuts during my performances. But I soon got the hang of it.

It also helped to write my own compositions. It wasn't too long after I left Karanese that I started funneling my grief onto paper as well, instead of just into my strings. My compositions are all dark, minor key pieces that reflect my inner turmoil, but again I was praised for my anguish, awarded for my loss. Some of my pieces I kept to myself, refusing to share with the world. Some are just too deep and reflective of my pain to let other people give me awards for.

No one knows of this inner pain I still feel. After I graduated from Sina, everyone seemed to forget the tragedy that happened to six of its brightest students. Everyone moved on, and they assumed that I had too. How they don't see my obvious display of misery in my playing, or in my compositions, I don't know, but they don't. Either that, or they just choose to ignore it. Either way, I never felt the need to correct them, to show them the vast error in their assumptions. I haven't moved on. I haven't forgotten. And I never will. I put on a facade every time I play. Every recital, every concert, every interview, every public relations stunt, I put on my mask of false happiness, of false security, and show the world who they think I am, who they want me to be. But it will never be more than just a mask.

When the cab pulls to a stop in front of the grand building, I hand the cab driver his fare and climb out of the car. It's very early in the morning. The sun has just barely risen. The sidewalks are quiet. The city is still sleeping. But the front doors of the concert hall are unlocked, and I make my way inside. I've played in this hall before, so I know how to navigate through the grand foyer and into the small, secluded hallways that lead to the back of the building and a number of small practice rooms. Rehearsal doesn't start for another five hours, but that doesn't make any difference to me. I'll practice by myself until ten, then practice with the rest of the group for the rest of the day. The longer I'm playing my violin, the better.

Entering the very last practice room at the end of the hall, I close the door securely behind me, then gently place my violin on top of the upright piano in the corner and drop my backpack to the floor. I start my careful and precise routine of opening my violin case, checking every inch of the instrument for any signs of damage, polishing the wood, cleaning the strings, adjusting the bridge, cleaning and aligning the chin rest, meticulously tuning the strings, tightening the hair on my bow, applying the perfect amount of rosin to the bow hair, and then setting violin and bow gently in my lap. Then, I reach for my backpack. I pull out my small folder of sheet music- not that I usually use any, but just in case I want it- and set it on the stand in front of my chair. Next, I pull out a black hand towel, a thick rubber band, and a small black box. Setting the clean towel on the stand, I open the box and extract one of the dozen razors inside.

I set the small box down, carefully placing the razor on top of the towel. I roll up the sleeve of my left arm to reveal a long row of cuts in various stages of healing. Some are puckered white scars, others are still red and scabbed, and one is even still fresh from last night. I pick up my razor and find a patch of skin. It only takes one sharp drag of the metal across my flesh. As soon as that one wound opens wide, I grab the towel and press it to my arm, catching the thick crimson before it falls. I press the towel firmly to the wound, taking a deep breath and letting my eyes drift closed as I feel the pain spread through my whole body. I feel my grief return, the dull ache of my loss. I greedily take it all in, like a desert traveler who stumbles across an oasis. Once I feel the passion fully envelop me, I grab the rubber band and slip it over my arm to hold the towel in place as it absorbs my blood. I position the tight strap just right so that it lies directly over the wound, contributing endless pressure.

Only then am I able to pick up my precious violin and rest it on my shoulder. I lean my chin against the chin rest, then reach for my bow. I let the pain conduct me as I bring the bow to the strings, then slowly drag it across. Music fills the small room and I let my eyes drift closed, getting completely lost in the sounds of my pain. The only thing that exists in the world right now is the instrument beneath my chin, the bow in my hand, and the pain radiating throughout my whole body.

The seconds turn into minutes, and the minutes into hours. But time means nothing as I let my music consume me. I let it flow from the instrument to sing out the inner turmoil boiling up from within me. I remember my father's face, although his image has become blurry over the years. I remember his hands on mine, teaching me a skill that would later become my entire life. I remember Isabel's laugh, and the contagious nature of it causing the others to laugh as well. I remember her eyes, those beautiful green eyes that I will never forget for as long as I live. I remember how much Oluo and Petra loved each other, the look they'd give each other when the rest of the world had disappeared to them. I remember the way Gunther and Eld used to compete with each other on their trumpets, always trying to determine who was the best player. I remember the way Farlan's fingers would start moving, as if playing an invisible piano, and how he never seemed to even realize he was doing it. I remember sitting with all my friends, all crammed in a practice room, playing nameless songs and just enjoying our music. I remember blinding headlights. I remember crunching metal. I remember screams cut short. I remember moans and hoarse breathing that fades into nothing. I remember the smell of blood and fear. I remember Isabel crying. I remember the scream of the sirens. I remember the sharp buzz of the saws. I remember-

I startle violently, the bow screeching against the strings, as someone knocks on the door of the practice room. It's two short knocks, that's all, and then whoever is on the other side is walking away. I stare at the door for a long minute, trying to regain my composure. After a few deep breaths, I carefully set down my violin and bow, then pull my cell phone from my pocket to check the time. It's nine thirty. That must've been someone rounding everyone up for practice. Well I still have a little time.

I carefully put my violin away, going through my routine once again, only this time in reverse. Once my precious instrument is tucked safely away in its case, I reach into my backpack to pull out a pack of smokes and a lighter. My nerves are still shot from being startled. I need to calm down. Placing the end of the cigarette between my lips, I light it and take a deep drag. Letting the cigarette hang limply from my lips, I focus on the thick rag pressed to the still bleeding wound. I remove the rag and replace it with a patch of gauze and tape so that I can better hide it under the sleeve of my button down. With that taken care of, I roll down my sleeve and secure the buttons on the cuff. Finishing my cigarette, I snuff it out on the bottom of my shoe and stuff the end in my pocket to properly dispose of the next time I see an ash tray.

Cleaning up the small room, I pack my things away, then grab my violin and head out of the room. I'm immediately greeted by the sound of various instruments, all practicing independently from one another. The noise is loud and obnoxious, but it's comforting to me. It reminds me of playing with my small group of friends.

When I reach the main stage of the concert hall, I see that pretty much the entire orchestra is already seated and ready to begin rehearsal. The conductor spots me quickly, and waves me forward. I approach the older man and he claps me on the shoulder.

"It's good to see you again, Levi. Thank you for agreeing to join us for our concert tomorrow night," the man tells me with a big smile.

"The honor is mine, Pixis," I reply out of courtesy, forcing on that false mask again. "I would never turn down an opportunity to play in your orchestra."

I guess that could be true. Of all the groups I've bounced back and forth between, playing as a guest musician for Trost is probably my favorite. Pixis is a brilliant conductor and composer, and his orchestra is full of some of the best musicians I've ever worked with. Usually when I get in an invitation to play with this group, I accept.

"Oh, not as honored as I am to have you here," he smiles. He turns to the rest of the group and taps his baton quickly and loudly on the stand in front of him. "For all of you who've recently joined, let me introduce to you Levi Ackerman. He'll be playing as our guest in tomorrow night's concert. For all of you who've been here for a few months, then I'm sure you remember him."

I half wave, not bothering to give my normal introduction, considering most of these people have already heard it. It's boring anyway, me blabbering on and on about myself and my credentials, my achievements, and all the shit in my life that most people care about and that I find insignificant. I feel that my real talent comes from my pain, not from where I went to school or who I've played with in the past.

Pixis hands me a slim folder of sheet music and I take my seat in the chair separated just slightly from the rest of the first violins. I get my instrument ready as Pixis signals for the concertmaster to lead the tuning. I join in a moment later, and once the warm ups begin, I allow myself to focus more on the pain in my arm. As Pixis leads us out of the warm ups and into the actual pieces that we'll be playing in the concert tomorrow night, I finally allow myself to get lost in the grief. I keep my eyes mostly on Pixis, only occasionally glancing at the sheet music. I've played this piece before, so I don't really need to look at the sheets.

The sounds from the rest of the orchestra come together with the sound of my own instrument to create the beautiful music that consumes my entire being. I listen to the other first violins, and the second violins. I hear the slightly deeper tones of the violas, and the drastically deeper tones of the double basses. I listen to the steady beating of the timpani and the ring bells. I hear the smooth sounds of the brass instruments, the trumpets and trombones, the French horns and the tuba. I hear the soft sounds of the woodwinds, the clarinets and flutes and bassoons. I hear the flow of the piano bringing all the sounds together.

There are times when I miss being a part of a large group like this. But my occasional acceptance of invitations to join these groups is enough to satisfy me. As much as I enjoy playing with all these other players, hearing all these different sounds come together to form a singular piece, I much prefer playing by myself.

That's just another reason why these next three weeks in Shiganshina is going to be hard for me.

I'm on Tumblr (zoey04ereri) and I'll be tracking the tag 'fic: cidm'. I already have a bunch of posts on tumblr for this fic so I'll organize them into that tag.