Page 75 of Fragile Facade
I’ve always been one to build off the weather, and according to Lock, it’s been a beautiful weekend with clear skies and mild temperatures to make the music festival enjoyable. I didn’t even notice. But as I sit and bring my violin into position, placing the bow across the strings, the skies cloud over and I revel in my ability to influence the weather as much as it influences me.
Here I fucking am. The Ghost of Moros. Hurt with me.
Alone in a crowd but with all eyes on me, I sink and rise at once. My bow moves, and the first note of music is brutally magnificent, tinged with a slow, deep tone that resonates my fragmented anger as the strings vibrate. I let it play out, not rushing the single note, allowing it to cause its harm and set the weather on edge. When the first crack of thunder booms, I become the sentiment of my music.
I become a man who thinks of another man above himself.
I become resentful because of the power he wields over me.
I become irritated at the world for forcing me to live in it, but grateful to Moros for giving me a place to fit.
I lose my mind to feelings that conflict, my narcissistic tendencies mingling with selfless thoughts about a man who wears many masks and doesn’t know how to take them off. I hurt for him because he’s lost himself, and I hurt for myself because I suddenly care. My music picks up tempo, showing my temper, overpowering the thunder. And when lightning strikes to spotlight me on Death Row, I ignore my gathered audience and play for me and only me.
He'll hold my hand.
He’ll kiss me, not for the last time. Just in case…
He’ll chase me towards death and always pull me back because he knows the end is not what I seek.
It’s my undoing, this music. A mile marker of a new kind ofhereandthere.Instead of that one-or-two-second precipice, I’m on the ledge between the me who taunted a curse and the me who now fears that curse. My violin shows how terrified I am—it shows that fear will not undo me. The notes mingle with the atmosphere, the thunder my percussive backup and the lightning my webbed truth. And when our harmony is so well perfected that I’m sick with how sincere it is, I stop playing and breathe in petrichor and fog.
The drizzly mist turns into a steady rain, soothing the heat of my music and cooling it into understanding and admittance.
When I pick up playing again, slower and softer this time, a cello joins me.
I cry.
Hidden and secretive, I cry behind my mask of power and play terrible beauty with my brother, clad in a black mask. For whatever reason, it hurts worse than everything else. It’s been so long, this thing I refused to do because I didn’t know what my music would say if I started playing with Remi again. I should have known not to fear it because Remi is stronger than I’ve ever given him credit for. He gets it. Understands it. Knows what it’s like to break in half and reassemble the pieces. He knows what love feels like, tainted yet pure, and he knows the same fear I know. The curse that has threatened us since birth.
He admitted he feared it.
I refused to fear it.
In the end, we’re in the same place. Mixed with Hallows boys who sew our sanity to theirs in a way neither of us ever asked for but cling so hard to that it’s impossible to talk about. It can’t be explained. He never expected to need Krypt. I never expected to want Riot. So, here we play, two Sauder brothers, living the same lie and turning it into a truth.
His cello adds depth to my violin, the instruments harmonizing like soulmates. Our music awes me, but it awes the town even more. Men weep and women reminisce. Children don’t know what it means but feel it deep in their innocent souls, knowing it’s something, but not what. They build off us as we build off each other, the weather witness to it all, accompanying our melody and adding mood to our sound.
It's all made worse when Selena joins, clad in black with her black-faced mask, playing the violin today. Her mood fits into our stringed instruments, and the three of us mourn together for lives lost and pain unspoken.
We play until there’s nothing left to say. Until the emotions and the pain are bled from our souls. And then we stop. Still. Instruments dropping but positions never moving. Moros takes a breath, and the rumbling thunder plays us out, finalizing our song. Soaked through from the rain, I allow it to blanket me, protect me, until I breathe enough times to look at my siblings. I can’t speak, or talk, or discuss any of it, and they don’t expect me to. We nod at each other, and then we all go our separate ways through the crowd—every person with their hand over their heart. Even those who don’t know what it means.
If any locals recognize us as siblings, they don’t mention it, giving me a reprieve from discovery for now.
Something leaves me as I walk away. I don’t know what it is, but when I look up at where I’m walking, I wonder if it’s resistance. That dark well no longer feels new. It feels like me. The very essence of who I am, and I’m not fighting it as much anymore. The resistance to this new thing is gone.
29
BACK TO BACK
RIOT
I loathehim for making me try so hard to hold everything in. The pressure building inside my chest and head is too much for my injuries to bear. With my legs hanging over the side of Death Mark’s roof, I listen to Soren play his emotions through four strings while I break all over again, weak from so much healing. Afraid because of his music and what it means. Proud of him without wanting to admit it. Feeling everything he feels as it slips into the rain and reverberates in my chest.
Krypt doesn’t comment or touch me, but when Remi joins his brother in the middle of Death Row, he becomes stoic and full, just like I am. We used to play piano together, too, but in the years since I joined Vile House, and him shortly after, we forgot how to express ourselves and turned only to violence instead. Violence and power and manipulations. For so long, I’ve forgotten that there’s another way.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” Krypt asks, staring at the Sauder brothers as Selena joins them.
My new teeth implants hurt enough to use as an excuse not to speak, so I don’t. I don’t know what to tell him. Everyone knows Ghost and I have issues with each other, but we’re doing a shit job of hiding how drastically they’ve changed. Krypt thinks he knows something, but how can he know when we don’t even know? How is it possible to explain a shift in dynamic that isn’t yet properly defined?
