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

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?]

cw: reference to past suicide

[howtheworldwas]

I don't know. Why me, especially after I decided that it was too hard to go on living?

[ Eurydice has spent so many weeks thinking that her time was up, that she was a lost cause, only to find out that might not be the case. She'd like Benjamin to have some of that hope, too. ]

Besides, you're more than that.

cw: self-harm

[barberic]

[He draws himself a little more upright, though his head remains bowed, his injured left hand curling into a fist and the right curling around it and squeezing tight.

He thinks he understands Discord and Antonio's choice a little better now. He's, equally, more furious with them, for taking it and slamming that door closed to him.]

...What am I, then?

[howtheworldwas]

[ Eurydice watches Benjamin squeeze his hand, but doesn't say anything about that. Instead: ]

A father. A friend. Someone who loves and cares, for the living and the dead. [ She offers him a small, watery smile. ] You're my friend. I guess that's pretty special. I don't have a lot of those.

[barberic]

[He looks up to meet her, slowly, and there's a quiet desolation, eyes all the bluer for being wet and rimmed with tears.

His expression crumples by degrees, first his lips pursing, and wobbling, and then he swallows hard, and looks back down at the ground.

Then he reaches out and takes her hand, his voice soft and barely there.]

...Then I'm glad to be counted among them. [He takes a breath in, and out, that moves his whole chest.] As long as you'll have me.