Week Six

[stagemanagers]

[Last week, in It's Curtains, the weather changed, and with it your fortune in Dads. Discord took Salieri out - or perhaps Salieri took Discord out - and left the survivors with that much less impulse control. Nonetheless, a visit from a new friend might have provided a little bit of much-needed hope?

On Sunday morning, you'll find that the other side of the second floor has opened up - as well as the actual intended path to reach the roof garden. You can finally stop climbing up that rope every time you want to have a picnic or secret lover's rendezvous!

Outside, the weather seems to have calmed down. It's sunny again, with rather a lot of clouds. Though it's warm, the atmosphere seems very...still.]


Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

(( Be sure to submit your memory regain and your AC for this week! As always, Hester's office hours and the merch booth remain available. ))

Comments

cw: slight mention of blood

[barberic]

[Lucy...
"Yes I lied, cos I love you! I'd be twice the wife she was!"
What have I done?

Despite the comforting presence of Farrah tucked close against him in the bed arguably too small for both, Benjamin does not rest easily. But there comes a point-

"That's the old woman. You've hurt her too, have you? You shouldn't, you know. You shouldn't hurt nobody."

-where he no longer rests at all. He tenses- seizes, with a gurgle, a death rattle in the back of his throat, and then wakes.

Alive, and safe in his bed in Ambassador, with Farrah and Milky White curled on top of one of his arms.

Even though he's awake, he just lies there for a while, until Farrah has flown the metaphorical nest for the day.

He doesn't follow any of the rituals he'd started, even at his lowest moments up until now.

Instead, he goes down to the garden, first thing in the morning, bracing himself to have to dig again (his back is still sore, his cut hand is aching, every other wound is gone, healed-

He sees Antonio and Discord's shrouded bodies, laid out in too-perfect holes, with too-perfect mounds of dirt next to them, and... Well, nothing would have been adequate enough to prepare him for this. He knows Antonio's shroud is the same as the one he'd wrapped him in, knows it by the dried stain of blood where blood had seeped out of his fatal wound without the dagger there to block it.

The stain stares back at him now, like a withered boutonniere, and the sight of the blood nearly turns his stomach.

He drops to his hands and knees at the foot of Antonio's grave, his hands clenched in the grass, his voice a desperate, keening wail.]

Oh my friends, my friends, I'm asking
How can I live, yet you are gone
There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain, goes on and on...

All these faces in my memory
And her bloodstains on my hands
How can I get up each morning,
When I know my soul is damned?

Oh my friends, my friends, please answer!
I don't know which way to go
It should be me beneath the flowers,
I cannot bear this pain... alone...

For Farrah; Sunday night

[barberic]

[When Farrah comes back to Ambassador that night, Benjamin is sitting on the side of his bed, holding a photograph in his trembling hands. It isn't the brass-framed ambrotype of his wife and baby daughter, but a plain, photo paper print-out.

When she comes in, he lets it hang between his knees from one hand, the other coming up to run through his hair.

He's been thinking about what to say to her all evening. He deserves to be hated. He isn't fit to be a comfort to anyone, he's a monster. A butcher. A murderer.

But Farrah has lost...almost everyone. Her life back home, and the family she's made here. He sees himself in her anger, now, his thirst for vengeance in her fury, his emptiness in hers, and it echoes sickeningly inside of him. He can't abandon her outright, either. Even if it is for her own good.

She's almost more his own daughter than Johanna. And he needs to get her away from him before she follows his path to hell.]

...You're sure you don't want to find somewhere else to sleep? I bet Spongebob would appreciate the company.

[brokeforgood]

[Farrah can tell something’s off when she enters the room. She’s almost hyperaware of it, the memory of Riley’s most awkward sleepover ever fresh on her mind. It wasn’t necessarily a bad memory—- not in comparison to the others she’s had, but it does remind her what it’s like to feel constantly concerned about what everyone else in the room is thinking. Salieri had freed her from that worry, and with him gone, she’s learning to fear it again.

She can’t quite place her finger on what exactly is wrong, though, as she joins him on the side of the bed, and starts to undo one half of her braids.]

I’m sure. I want to stay here. Unless… [She hesitates, thinking about herself again. What a burden she must be, a cursed girl who was dooming everyone around her, a hopeless loser girl who no one understands no one—-

She reaches across the bed, then sets Milky White on her lap. She lets the soft toy fill her with courage. Tries to use that courage to hide the fear and sorrow in her voice. Fails.]

Do you—- want me to go?

[barberic]

No.

[That answer is quick and decisive and honest, at least, and gets him to sit up and look at her.]

But I want... to protect you. And I-

[She looks so small and scared. He wants to reach out to her, to hold her. He wants to say never mind and just take his shoes off and get into bed, to hold her, unsleeping, while she dreams, and shush her back to sleep when the nightmares come.

But he remembers Johanna's face, dressed as a dirty street urchin with her hair up under a hat but Johanna nonetheless, and how could he not have recognized his own flesh and blood, his own eyes staring wide and scared back at him? Her voice screaming, begging as he shoved her into the chair and put a razor to her throat-

How about a shave, boy?

He looks away from Farrah, and back down at his hands, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it, to avoid letting out a sob.]

I'm an evil man, Farrah. I don't...want you to get hurt. By being around me.

[brokeforgood]

[She doesn’t get a chance to be relieved by his reassurance. Instead, it plunges her into a different kind of worry. A less self-obsessed kind of worry.

He wants to protect her.

Farrah knows what he’s doing. She’s tried to do the same in her own way, the past few weeks—- the past year. Since the fall. She’d been testing people’s patience, pushing them away when they finally broke and failed, up until her death. In her new life, no one has accepted this from her. She has to return the favor.

And besides all that, she’s sincere when she reaches over, and gently sets Milky White onto his lap. When she sets a hand onto his knee immediately after.]

That’s okay. I don’t care if you’re evil. I’m a bad kid. And you still—-

You still love me.

[barberic]

[He was expecting her to get up. To say something furious, maybe, or tell him she hates him, call him a liar. He was even expecting her to press him with questions, curious, determined child that she is, or insist that he isn't as evil as he says.

What she does, putting Milky White in his lap and touching his knee, quietly accepting what he said without question or rebuttal, is the furthest possible thing from what he could have expected.

And it utterly unmakes him.

He covers her hand with his own. The bandage around his hand is fresh, and more meticulously applied than the one she put on him during the trial, but it's probably for the best that it isn't the same bandage.

Every time he thinks of violence his vision goes red with Lucy's blood, he feels the razor cutting into his throat like cutting a marionette's strings, but there's still a writhing, withered hatred in his heart for whoever told this child that she was bad, so many times that she believes it.

The first sob out of him is physically painful, his fingers tightening around her hand, and his voice is small, barely above a whisper.]

I don't want to hurt you. I can't-

I can't lose another daughter.

[brokeforgood]

[She scoots across the edge of the bed, to close the small amount of distance between them. She doesn’t even have to think about what to say next, leaning against him, her voice equally small—- but so sure in what she speaks.]

I cant lose another dad.

I’m here.

Garden

[mayavericks]

[Maya is... wandering rather listlessly when she hears that "singing." There are only a few people remaining that could have a voice like that, and it worries her to no end to hear it so desperate. She sprints toward it, only to stop short when she spots Benjamin.]

Barker-san. Benjamin.

[She stops beside him and... Stares silently at what she can only assume has set him off so terribly.]

I am here. I'm right here.

[barberic]

[He remains where he is, unmoving except for the shuddering breaths he takes that rattle in his whole, broken chest.]

...Leave me. I beg of you.

[mayavericks]

Please do not ask me to do that.

[She kneels beside him, hand on his back.]

You have been so strong for me. Please let me extend the courtesy to you.

[barberic]

[He doesn't flinch, but goes still when she puts her hand on his back.]

I don't deserve it.

What have I become?
How could I know?
That who I thought I was
Died so long, long ago...

It was never my intent to deceive you, Miss Tendo. [It kills him not to call her Maya. But it's for her own good that he push her away. Being around him is only fit to get you killed.]

Whatever kind of monster I am, know that I never meant to lie.

[mayavericks]

Benjamin. Whatever you think you are, whatever this monster of a Wizard has shown you, I don't believe that to be you.

[She strokes her fingers through his hair, then down the span of his neck. She keeps her fingers working against his shoulders.]

A monster would not have held any one of us as we cried. As we mourned. He would not have helped us honor our dead.

[barberic]

I took my revenge on the man who sent me away. But that isn't what makes me a monster, no.

[He raises himself up from his practically supplicant position, though his head and shoulders remain bowed low.]

No, it's the dozens of men I butchered along the way. It's my own wife's bl--

[He has to take a breath, squeeze his eyes shut.]

Lucy didn't die when I was in Australia. Oh, she poisoned herself and it destroyed her mind, but God, help her, she didn't die... [The last word a wretched moan, he breaks off in a sob, his hands squeezed tight into fists on the earth in front of his knees.]

'Don't I know you?' she said. And I was too caught up in my fantasies of revenge to recognize her until she lay dead at my feet!

garden

[howtheworldwas]

[ Eurydice expects the same as Benjamin -- when she arrives in the garden, she's already carrying a shovel. She hears Benjamin before she sees him -- and at first, she thinks this is another work song, that he's just feeling what she's feeling.

As soon as she sees the scene, she knows she couldn't be more wrong. Eurydice drops the shovel, and walks the perimeter of the garden, so that she's approaching Benjamin from the front. She doesn't want to startle him. He gave her that courtesy once -- the least she can do is repay it.

She crosses the distance, and once she's standing next to him: ]

You're not going to bear it alone.

[barberic]

[He doesn't acknowledge her careful approach, but nor does he seem to be startled, so her caution has been well-repaid.

Or it's possible he barely noticed her at all, the way that he stays huddled on the ground, his broad shoulders trembling from this new, unbearable weight placed upon them, his hands stretched out in front of him, clenched into fists and held together like...

Well, like they're bound.]

...I don't deserve your kindness.

[howtheworldwas]

[ Oh, no. That's not good. (low, keep your head --)

Eurydice sits with him and presses her shoulder against his. To be fair, it's more like her shoulder against his arm, since she's so much shorter. But the sentiment is still there. ]

I know I'm still kind of new at it, but...I don't think that's how that works.

[barberic]

[It doesn't matter how tall he is. Not when he's laid so desolately low. He doesn't rise to meet her, but the shudders wracking his bent shoulders do ebb.]

You don't understand. I'm a murderer- no, not just a murderer, a monster.

My life is over. This place is my personal hell, forced to forget, and care, and love, and lose, and kill, and die, over and over again, week after week- God, any hell would be more merciful than this.

[howtheworldwas]

[ Eurydice is willing to go along with what Benjamin is saying -- up to a point. She doesn't know what he's talking about, nor does she know what he remembered. But she knows a lot about hell. ]

No. In hell, you'd forget them all, and only remember the grief, forever.

[ I remember flowers... ]

I don't know why you think you're a monster. Maybe you were one, before this. [ That's not for her to judge. ] But you haven't been one here. This place is awful, but... [ she looks down at the graves. ] ...it was my second chance. Maybe it's yours, too.

[barberic]

[He listens to her. She's always been sensible. Practical.

She's the one whose experience most closely mirrors his own. At least, he'd thought. Would it really be worse to remember nothing but the grief? He doesn't think anything could be worse than the pain he feels right now.]

...But why me? I'm just... a foolish barber. A butcher. A madman. I let myself be put down, like a rabid dog.

[Who would waste their time to save a man like me?]

[themuseabandonsyou]

[ Orpheus arrives with his guitar on his back, preparing to sit in the garden and play with the Balladeer again as best he can with the veil of mortality between them. He's... not surprised to find Benjamin here, or by the state he's in. He knew he and Antonio had become very close friends in their time here, and he hangs back for a moment at the edge of the garden, debating coming closer before deciding to announce his presence so as not to catch Benjamin by surprise. ]

On your feet
Do not let sadness bind you
All your grief
For those you've left behind you
Gods around us,
Looking on in mercy
Forgive our friends their trespasses and honor them their stories

[barberic]

[Benjamin doesn't acknowledge Orpheus' approach, as such.

But the trembling in his shoulders gives way to full on, heart-wracking sobs. For all he's lost and all he'll never see again, for his friends here, buried beneath the earth.

And for the rest of them still alive, that he is the one left behind, when better men have died.]

[themuseabandonsyou]

[ That's more or less the reaction Orpheus was expecting, honestly. Not every problem can be fixed with just a song alone, he knows that, and he'll cautiously walk up next to where Benjamin kneels in the dirt and takes a knee next to him. ]

We've lost... a lot of friends. [ he says, not specifying whether he means here or back home, because both are true and he gets the feeling whatever Benjamin remembered this morning was... not pleasant. Fresh as the grief of losing Antonio is, it doesn't quite account for all this. ] Do you want to start burying them? Or do you want to spend some more time with them, like this?

cw: slight self-harm

[barberic]

[Benjamin takes a few deep, shaky breaths to try and choke back the tidal wave of grief he's drowning under. He clenches his hands into fists, the burn of the cut on his palm a welcome ache.

His voice is a deep, rough wreck.]

I don't... I don't know if I can do it, this time.

[His strong back is bent, bowed, broken under the weight of his pain and regret.]

[themuseabandonsyou]

[ Orpheus frowns a little, watching him. ] Be careful. With your hand, I mean. You're still healing.

[ He reaches out, placing a gentle hand over Benjamin's. ]

And that's okay. The rest of us can handle it, this time. You've already done so much. For them. For all of us. Please remember that, okay?

[barberic]

...What good did it do? They're still dead.

[Not...just the graves at their feet.]