Disclaimer: Don't own the characters at all (sad face)

Spoilers: None that I can think of, except the passing references to when Tony has been in hospital before.

Summary: Tony goes on holiday for two weeks, keeps everyone up to date so they don't worry while he's away, returns to work as normal, but doesn't remember what he did. Not wanting the team to worry he tries to hide it from them, but was that the right course of action to take when it could endanger him and possibly the team.

Okay well this story is strange so bare with it and I know I shouldn't have started it but seen as 'Best forgotten is drawing to a close I wanted something new, and it has been sitting on the computer for a long time as have some other new ideas. Me and a friend got the basic idea down while nattering and it just expanded from there so enjoy.

Harmonic Decay

Every system and mechanism decays eventually, it is just a matter of time and luck, or not as the case may be, on where and when your decline will occur.

Prologue

The soft concordant notes rose up from the gramophone and spun slowly around him, the bows gliding across the tightly wound nylon strings of the violins, piercing his soul.

Lacrimosa dies illa...

The mournful quality of the words stirred up distant emotions and thoughts, and they spun together in rhythm, intermingling, like a double helix.

The harmony of the four parts creating a pitch perfect rendition of a classic; the deep Basses right through to the higher Sopranos, setting the range of the piece. Though, of course not forgetting the two middle sections; Tenors and Altos, creating a more wholesome and full depth feeling of the song. Notes perfectly in time with each other, some being held for longer than others, creating the eerie melody.

And so it continued.

The needle skimmed through the channels in the vinyl record, for it was only this that was truly able to speed up or slow down the tracks without it sounding unnatural to the ear. Though if it was too fast or too slow then the harmony would be ruined, it would decay into the air like a wisp of a breath in the night sky.

…Qua resurget ex favilla…

Even the quieter notes echoed and twirled around the smooth white walls of the room in which, held a person. The light crescendo towards the end of that line and throughout the next increased as is lead up to a peak in the decibel levels, signifying an important part of the music, the climax if you will. Well, the first of the two for this particular piece.

…Judicandus homo reus…

It all resounded in the blank spaces of his mind; thoughts and feelings rampant, yet disconnected, without meaning and out of context. Pain. Fear. Loss. Perfectly mirroring the atmosphere of the full orchestra playing the music.

…Lacrimosa dies illa…

The corresponding images lost in the haze of his new world; into the darkness they had gone, not to be found unless a light strong enough to not fear the dark were to shine.

The tone of the second part seemed, if possible, more melancholic than the last. The pain turned to agony, the fear to horror, and the loss to grief. All empowering and inescapable.

But then the speed changed and he could do nothing to stop it. For he was bound with soft leather restraints; both on his wrists and ankles, and dressed in some kind of hospital clothes. But the reason for being there and listening to the music was also lost in the emotion filled, but image-less, abyss.

As the cadence was broken, the rhythm declining, the harmony in decay and disarray. The higher notes of the Soprano's more like screams in the man's disillusioned mind, the basses disappearing in the pitch and the melody lost to the slowing speed.

The man with the glazed green eyes tried to move, to escape the torture of the screams. The bows of the violins lay broken in his mind, the orchestra missing, just a faulty copy of a misaligned madness of sounds. Just noise; discordant and distorted into something now unrecognisable.

Notes lengthening and dragging across almost whole bars rather than the half a bar it would usually take. A perpetual resonance; causing the man to shudder at each screech and boom. The room seemed to focus in his mind a little and fists of slowly dripping blood appeared on the furthest wall, and he had no idea how they'd gotten there.

And then silence filled the empty room.

Nothing.

Just like his mind.

Blank.

A new canvas to draw upon.

Like the soft padded walls, floor and ceiling of the darkening room.

That was when he saw the shadows looming across the walls, whether walking past the barred window of the heavy door holding the man in the room in, or whether they were encroaching in the man's own hellish nightmare, where he had no control. No choice or free will. Simply nothing. Not anymore.

The setting sun created a criss-cross pattern across the wall opposite the small grated and grey window, making the now somewhat moving fractal blood patterns on the once pure white wall gleam with a new life.

The life that had been changed.

TBC

I know its short but more soon, please review as always.