Yup, a new one. First of...No! I am not abandoning An Eternity of This! I'm getting the next chapter ready to go in the next couple days right now!
But this particular story has been in my head for more than six months now and I just had to get it on paper--so to speak! It was originally to be a one-shot entry in a contest between Scarlett Rat (A Feast for Crows and Pale Horse), but it just took on more of a life to be just a one-shot.
Not quite a retelling...but defintely has a POTO theme.
My wonderful friend and co-author, Musique et Amour betaing!
Please enjoy!
To live and not to breathe
Is to die in tragedy
To run, to run away to find what to believe
And I leave behind this hurricane of fucking lies
I lost my faith to this, this town that don't exist
Tales of a Broken Home, American Idiot, Greenday
Chapter One: To Live and Not to Breathe
His boots.
He kept his eyes focused on his boots. The steady flash of worn black leather, ragged about the soles, the thud they made against the pavement under his feet the only sound he allowed himself to hear. His strides were long; sure. He knew exactly where to turn, when to stop for the pedestrian signals and when to begin walking again. All without looking up. He'd walked this path many times, nearly ten years now. It was as familiar to him as the sight of those boots, which had belonged to him even longer than this journey had.
If anyone found the sight of this masked man, dressed in nearly all black, the edges of his duster flaring behind him, a violin case in one hand, the other jammed into his pocket stalking through the streets of Indianapolis without looking at a soul or even acknowledging the world around him a strange one, they didn't give evidence to that fact. He wouldn't have been bothered to care anyway...They were nothing to him...just he was nothing...to everyone.
Another nearly homeless eccentric person in a city of nearly homeless eccentric souls. What did they care about this dark shadow in their sunlit world, swirling in and around them, passing them without even a sound besides the lonely swirl of that coat? They didn't. He couldn't care less.
In fact, many of them were familiar with him. There were some, mostly newspaper vendors and shop-keeps, that saw him everyday, and even looked for him. He passed them at the same time every morning, appearing out of the crowd of commuters in business suits and pastel three piece skirt sets, his head far above most of them, a large dark crow among pale doves and sparrows. The violinist was a familiar sight along Madison Boulevard.
But they were not familiar faces to him. He never bothered to meet their eyes. Didn't want to see the questions, the curiosity, that moment of fear when they tried to pretend that they hadn't been staring at the mask and the false glibness that followed. So similar to the vulgar stare than avoidance of eyes that those in wheelchair and with visible flaws received. The mask hid a multitude of sins...a reminder of what he had done and what he was. He didn't want to see himself reflected in their glassy eyes.
His steps took him to the corner upon where he played every morning. With a weary sigh, he lowered to a crouch, long black clad legs spread and flipped up the latches on his violin case, then slowly opened the beaten, battered, hardened leather. Long pale fingers reached for it, curling about the neck and cupping the body. He lifted it gently, almost reverently. A singular caress was given to smooth, glossy wood, faded now from years of use. But other than that sense of age, the violin was perfect in every way.
A Stradivarius, nearly fifty years old, fifteen years older than himself...He'd found it in a dumpster of a townhouse in Lockerbie, discarded when a new one had been purchased for the wealthy student of music that lived there. He'd found much of the furnishings of his own dingy one room apartment in that dumpster. Clothing, lamps, a toaster, a chaise lounge, even a DVD player that he'd hooked up and found faultless. It had been months since he'd been able to afford to watch a movie, or afford cable. The stash of discarded DVD's not deemed worthy of a church rummage sale had been watched over and over that night...
But nothing was as precious as this violin. It was cruel...the discarding of such a precious, precious thing.
Another hand lifted the bow carefully from its groove within the case. Rosin had been added just this morning, something he took the utmost care in doing. This instrument was his most prized possession, as vital to him as the mask. Opposites they were. The faded, white silk covered the evil, shielded the world from the demons within his being and visage. The violin released the good, what little there was, within him, and gave the world a taste of the angel weeping in his soul.
A ragged toe of his boot shifted the case out in front of him as he stood. By the end of the day, that worn velvet lining would hopefully be scattered with a modest pile of dollar bills and a good bit of change. On a normal day, he earned as much as twenty dollars...not much, but enough to put away and save for his rent, guaranteeing at least another month of a roof over his head, even if that roof was a canvas of moldy patches of ceiling and cracked drywall surrounding the one room and the tiny kitchenette. Enough that the small refrigerator that listed precariously to one side would have electricity to greet him with light each morning when he reached for the milk that the earnings also bought him. Enough to buy him several bags of generic brand cereal – the counterfeit Fruit Loops were his favorite. Enough that he could have water to bathe and cook with, even if he didn't have enough to afford the repairs that the landlord refused to make to the water heater to make that water welcoming. But a freezing shower with a bar of dime-store soap was better than being filthy and unable to even have access to toilet paper. He'd survived those conditions for nearly five years...he wouldn't go back to that...
And no one would hire a masked man...or a man who had betrayed his own country and spent half a decade in a North Korean prison camp as punishment for his crimes...
For a brief moment, he was there, in that mere hovel in the ground...his hands tied behind his back, long, blood caked blonde hair hanging in his swollen eyes, his mouth so badly ripped open on either side from the torture methods that he couldn't even speak for near fainting with pain.
They'd already done so much to him...how did they expect him to answer their questions if he could not even swallow past the blood clotting in his throat from a collapsed lung, punctured by a broken rib when they had beat him with canes for over an hour, methodically taking their time, never letting him get used to the pain in any certain area of his body. How many bones in his body were broken? He couldn't even tell. There was just...so much pain. It wracked him, consumed him. He couldn't even hear them for the screams issuing forth in his brain, the blood pounding in his ears. If only he could fall unconscious...but they denied him even that, using a bucket of ice water to dump over him every ten minutes, at exactly the same time, rousing his senses.
And their questions were pointless...rhetorical. "Do the other soldiers know you are here? Do they know that we have you? Will your commanding officer send scouts for you?"
His platoon knew he was here...After they had found him with that prostitute, directly disobeying an order to not bed any of the country's women, and had learned that she had drugged him and gotten him to confess their route through the jungle that would lead them to the rebel camp they were to commandeer and destroy, they had no longer called him one of their own. By then, it had been too late. The whore had already sent word...their convoy was attacked that night, everyone slaughtered...all but his officer and himself. The medics had rescued his commander...and left him to die as a traitor.
"Answer the question!" He'd raised his head, but could only gurgle in the back of his throat. The man before him had reddened with anger. "You won't speak?"
He'd finally mumbled. "Blood...smells.." and then slumped again, moaning at the pain in his ribs, the pain everywhere.
"It smells, does it? Well, let's fix that problem, shall we?"
Erik had only seen the glint of a knife already coated with his blood as it sliced down, and begun to saw back and forth.
He'd fallen unconscious.
When he'd woken, he'd been forever changed...
With the onslaught of memories, his eyes sunk closed. There was no pain...the pain had long ago gone numb, gone dead inside of him with the passage of time. After that first moment outside of that prison camp, when he'd first caught sight of his bare face in the rear view mirror of the medic truck...that horror, disbelief, raw anguish that this was him...the pain had been nearly crushing. He'd lain in that hospital room for weeks and had cried. They hadn't even attempted surgery to correct the damage done to him. He had been dishonorably discharged that day before his capture, he had no longer had the benefits of being a U.S. Soldier...and the cost for reconstruction and a prostheses had been astronomical. His only choice had been to simply...deal with it.
And he had.
After nearly a year in a rehabilitation center, preparing him to step back into the "world", he'd come to grips with what had been done to him. And what one stupid mistake, one moment of lust, had cost him. He could still see his friends' bodies littered across the blood-soaked jungle floor, their innards laid bare with the rapid fire of high powered assault rifles and machine guns... The simple, elemental desire to be inside a woman after months of not having one had done this to him.
Lifting the violin up and into position, angling his masked chin into the lacquered rest, he raised the bow, and set the rosin coated rod to the strings. Ironic really, he mused numbly. Wanting to fuck a woman had guaranteed he'd never have one again...
A slow slide of arm, the pressure of one slim pale wrist, and the subtle sway of his long body, and the notes of Libera Me lifted, drifting through the morning air, a haunting refrain heard along Madison Boulevard. The sound of a man weeping without words.
Before he had ever stepped foot into that Korean jungle, music had been a pasttime of his, nothing more than simply an expression of himself to give vent to his inner feelings.
Now it was all he had left.
"Kris?"
Kristen looked up from the book she'd had her nose firmly buried in.
"What? Oh...Sorry, Mareka." A soft laugh in her throat, she held up the copy of Jewels of the Sun, then slid it back in between two other volumes of Nora Roberts. "Haven't read that series yet. Thought I'd take a peek. Won't happen again." She cast an apologetic look toward her friend and employee.
Mareka gave her a bemused look, propping one slim brown hand on her hip, the other curled about a book truck. "Kris, you own the place! You can read all day and I can't say one thing about it!" She gave a little shove to the truck and wheeled to next stack to shelf a handful of Sidney Sheldons, the wine colored linen of her peasant dress lapping at her ankles. Turning back to cast another look at Kristen, the waist length plaits covered by her white headscarf struck up a small shower of sound as glass beads threaded throughout struck one another. "Besides, you look worn out. A little coffee break in the backroom with your feet up would do you some good."
Raking back of the chin length black curls from her face, Kristen raised one brow, then narrowed blue-green eyes at Mareka's dark ones. "Mmhm, you just want me to go to the Abbey and get you a latte and a donut since you were probably too busy giving Lucas his goodbyes this morning to make yourself any breakfast."
The other woman had the good grace to flush slightly, then lift one elegant shoulder. "Maybe, maybe not..." A giggle erupted from her throat and she crouched to shelve some more glossy new paperbacks into place. "Mm, that man...God, he can..." She cast a look at Kristen, then bit her lower lip. "Maybe I better leave those details for someone who's actually got some recently."
"Oh, shut up!" Kristen hurled a Karen Robards at her and snickered as Mareka ducked, the book tumbling harmlessly down the stairs and into the cashier's lobby. "You know, it's a little hard to have a date, let alone take a man home when you have a nine year old who wants to know everything that goes on and barely gives you room to breathe."
"You love it, though."
Her smile softened, and an affection shone in her eyes that another mother, a good mother, would have recognized immediately as pure, unwavering devotion. "Yeah, I do."
Mareka gave her an affectionate grin, then trotted down the stairs to gather the offending book, calling over her shoulder as she bent to pick it up. "Is that why you look so worn out this morning?"
Sighing heavily, Kristen finished off her shelving cart of new product, then leaned one hip upon the stairs' railing, rubbing a hand over her face, paler than usual. For a brief moment exhaustion slumped her shoulders and made her eyes droop. Damn, I'm tired...With a nod, she crossed both arms under her breasts and absently plucked at a loose thread of the robin egg blue turtleneck. "Yeah. Seth had a science project due for the Fair today in the gym and didn't bother telling me about it until the last minute. A volcano, Mareka, a damn volcano. In one night. If I never have to look at clay and toothpick trees again, it'll too soon." Smiling despite herself, she shook her head, then nudged the empty truck back into its space with the other three waiting to be taken to the backroom for restocking later. "My kitchen was a disaster. By the time we got done last night...well, Seth was in a funk and just wanted to go watch wrestling and I had a migraine from the smell. Took me four hours just to clean up."
Mareka waltzed back up the steps, book in hand, which she promptly shelved. "What! Didn't you make that little bugger help you?" Clucking her tongue, she gave her now empty as well truck a good shove with one sandaled foot into the group of the others.
Stifling a yawn, Kristen grinned then lined up the trucks and pushed the lot of them back to the curtained stock room, looking back over her shoulder at Mareka. "No...poor kid fell asleep with Smackdown still on the television. He needed the sleep. I just let him spend the night on the couch with the dog draped over his feet. He looked so sweet..."
"Seth or Bozo?"
"Gizmo, 'Eka, Gizmo. Oh, both of them." Watching her son sleep had never grown old for her. When he'd laid in his crib those first months, she'd rushed into the room several times a night just to make sure his chest still rose and fell. SIDS had seemed so overwhelmingly scary to her. Then, even as he'd grown from crib to toddler bed to the twin he now had in his room, she'd slipped in, at least once a night, to watch the lanky boy who'd surely tower over her in a few years rest, the shock of black hair over his brow, his freckled face in the soft lines of a child's sleep. She'd never tire of looking at her baby...
Covering a yawn, she blinked back the slight sting of tears, then pulled the curtains back shut over the stockroom as she moved back into the carpeted circle of the Children's Reading Ring, tapping a toe against a grinning cow leaping over the moon. "Hm, yeah, maybe I ought to go get some coffee." Moving to the back of the shop and the tiny employee lounge between the Mystery and Science Fiction stacks, she disappeared for a brief moment, then returned, shrugging into a light, black velvet jacket and draping her purse over one shoulder. "Medium non-fat latte with a shot of French Vanilla and a cruller?"
"Sweet music to my ears!"
"I bet. Okay, I'll be right ba–"
"Hey!" Mareka held up one slim, ringed finger to her lips and turned to the door, which they'd left propped open to allow in the crisp October breeze. "Listen..."
Kristen went still, poised on the stairs descending to the lobby and the visible street through that door and stained to hear what Mareka had heard.
Carried on the morning air, lifting down Madison Boulevard and into the front door of Turn the Page, the lonely, haunting, and beautiful strains of a violin drifted up and wove about her, seeping into her senses.
"It's him." She said simply, eyes that she hadn't realized she'd closed slowly re-opening. Turning and looking back over her shoulder to Mareka, she smiled softly.
"I'll be right back."
There was a bite in the air that morning, though Erik could no more feel it though the thick worn wool of the duster than he could through the silk covered paper mache of the mask. Only his chin and lips left bare by the covering could feel the chill, but they were warmed by the intimate press of the violin beneath his jaw and the silent mouthing words that he created to fit the melancholy piece.
His body swayed slowly with each draw of the bow over strings, dark blonde hair escaping the loose tail he wore it in and ribboning gently about his face and shoulders with the breeze's direction. The steely gray eyes behind the mask were shut tight, blocking out the sight of the city around him and the curious glances of pedestrians and commuters. Bowed over the violin, he played on, completely oblivious to any and all who came across him.
There were many glances cast his way. This silent man who never spoke, never even said a thanks when money was dropped into the violin case, but merely nodded, eyes still closed. Some of the looks were filled with curiosity for the mask, other with pity for the obviously shappy and worn clothing, and many simply that all too familiar scorn for someone they deemed "too lazy to get off their ass and get a real job." It was those looks he hated the most. Didn't they think that he had tried? Jesus Christ...He'd applied anywhere and everywhere, but a dishonorable discharge was almost a guaranteed, emphatic "no." Even worse, sometimes, than a felony on a record. It meant that even in the conditions of rigid and strict discipline, with your directions clear cut, and no gray area, you fucked up...big time. The employer does a little background work and they find out that you disobeyed direct orders and compromised an entire mission. He was as good as being a murderer.
He was a murderer.
The guilt weighed as heavy as the sorrow, as the anger that what looked him in the mirror every morning was now him and he could never change it. There were nights that he could barely sleep but for seeing their bodies, torn and gutted and maimed by bullets...
He pushed the images away and lost himself in the music, in the way the notes shimmered on the morning air, in the way they carried through his body, a vibrant hum over his skin and down into flesh and bone, as intimate as a woman's caress, as painful at times as a physical blow. But the pain was sweet, a warmth of release that sometimes bordered on the physical, always on the spiritual.
He heard the soft thump of several large coins, probably quarters, hit the lining and gave a nod, eyes still closed and heard an elderly female voice murmur, "Lovely playing, dear."
He cracked open one slate gray eye at that and met the faded green eyes of a tiny woman clutching her bamboo purse to her, her hair, which surely should have been white, died an outrageous blue. She came by everyday at the same time, always left exactly a dollar-fifty in quarters. He didn't know her name; he never asked. And neither did she know his; she never asked. She gave a trembling, fragile smile with overly painted lips.
He found himself doing what he'd never done before on this street corner. His lips – one of the few features that still gave hint to the lean, handsome face he'd once possessed – shifted from their usual grim, straight line and curled into a slow smile that once had been able to charm the pants right off the ladies. The other eye opened and he gave the nod again, one leg casually bending to prop a booted foot back against the concrete wall behind him.
His little lady gave a small coo of appreciation, and pressed one wrinkled, tiny hand to her chest, a pleased smile playing across her mouth. "Oh, my..."
His deep, rolling chuckle echoed down the street, mingling with the contrast of haunting notes.
That was how she saw him as she emerged from the doorway of Turn the Page, wrapped in her coat.
His deep, vibrant laughter reached her first, a thoroughly male sound of enjoyment that had her own lips lifting into a smile as she raised her eyes to see where such a resonant, bass chuckle had come from. She had always loved the sound of laughter. It never failed to spark her own.
A soft chuckle in her own throat, she spotted the duo upon the street corner and stilled, her smile fading to an expression of curiosity. Brow furrowed, she continued down the sidewalk, the high heels of her loafers clicking quietly on the pavement as she headed to the Abbey, located directly across the street from where the musician and the small, elderly lady stood.
They made quite a picture; the little woman clutching a hand and her purse to her chest, blue hair sparkling with dried hairspray in the early morning light, a delighted smile on her wrinkled face. The black clad man, long and lean, towering over her, bowed with his playing and his propped foot against the wall like a large raven, dark blond hair whipping about his masked face, just as his coat whipped about his legs.
Above his uncovered chin was one of the most devastating smiles she'd ever see on a man, a slow, sensual curl of thin, but firm lips, settling back into that cool, but gentle expression after recovering from that deep, traveling laughter.
She would recall later that though the sound had been genuine, it had been tarnished, hoarse, as if it had been many years since he'd last laughed.
The small woman gave his arm a pat, which Kristen couldn't help but notice that he glanced down to as if she'd painted his coat yellow.
"See you tomorrow, dear." Her tiny, faded voice carried across the street just barely to Kristen's ears as the older woman shuffled away, and about the corner, most likely headed to the Rx on Ilinoist Street that offered 45 off on Medicare prescriptions. The violinist watched her go, arm still slowly moving the bow across the strings, the song still carrying on the air. He shifted, leaned back into the wall once more, the eyes behind the mask beginning to slowly drift back closed.
So intent on watching him she was, fascinated by the gleam of light upon the dark gold and tawny strands slipping free of his hair tie, the sway of his body, the span and stretch of his pale fingers, and the lips that slowly faded once more into that grim, stern line, wishing she could see that smile again, she didn't even see the man in a three piece suit hurrying out of the Abbey, a coffee cup in hand.
Not until their bodies collided and a scalding slosh of hot liquid hiccuped out of the lid's lip and struck her cheek, burning the pale, delicate skin beneath her eye.
With a sharp cry of pain, she stumbled back, fingers pressed tight to the throbbing spot, eyes tightly shut.
"Why don't you watch where the hell you're going!" The man snarled at her, then glared down at the spot of staining brown upon the gray lapel of his fine suit. "Fuckin' suit cost four hundred dollars..." He shoved past her, grumbling, then continued on his way, not once asking her if she was alright.
"Damn, that hurts." She whispered fiercely to herself, then opened watering eyes to shoot a deathly glare at the retreating back of the jerk. If she'd not been surrounded by onlookers, boy she would have...
"Are you alright, miss?"
With a gasp, she turned and found herself in the shadow of the violinist, his head bowed over hers, his hair falling over his masked face, his eyes within the holes of the mask lit with concern, his mouth a grim line once more. Swallowing, wondering how he could have moved so fast, she took an involuntary step back and met his gaze. She'd always seem him from across the street, never this up close. The steely gray was rimmed with a circle of a shade very near charcoal, it was a slate so dark.
Cheek still painfully throbbing, she raised two fingers to press against the red patch of skin and nodded, her eyes dropping from his then shifting to the back of the man who had very nearly lost his entire cup upon her face. "Yeah, I'm fine...thanks." She looked back up to him, then winced as even the movement of blinking shifted the scalded skin.
He frowned, reached out a hand, long pale fingers lifting to her cheek.
Kristen drew back without thought, not so much in fear of him, but of having the tender area touched by another.
The eyes behind the mask blanked, lost every ounce of concern in them, and the taut line of his lips grew even more grim, if that was possible. Body straightening from the bow over hers, he stepped back, posture ram-rod straight and unbending. Kristen could feel the chill of his gaze even as the October air bit at her cheeks.
"It's alright, I'll ju–"
But before she could even finish the sentence, he had whirled, leaving her looking at the flare of coat and the whip of his hair as, without even looking, he crossed the street in long, graceful strides, hands fisted at his sides, cars slamming onto their brakes and horns blaring in an attempt to avoid him.
"...just put ice on it," she murmured, air rushing from her lungs as he made it safely across the street, scooped up his violin, pocketed the coins, closed the instrument up into the case, and disappeared around the corner, just a dark shadow heads above the other commuters.
For several moments she stared after him, a puzzled and concerned frown on her face, then the tolling of the Scottish Rite's Cathedral bells rang sonorously on the morning air, announcing that nine o'clock had come.
Time for the shop to open.
"Damn!" Brushing fingers once more over the burned cheek, she picked up the pace and hurried into the Abbey to get hers and Mareka's orders.