CURTAIN CALL

[guardianofsplendor]

[Once all is said and done, the Leading Player turns her attention back to everyone else. She claps her hands once and the lights turn off and on in quick succession in an attempt to gain back everyone’s attention.]

Ladies! Gentlemen! Cast, crew, and audience alike! Under the usual genre conventions this would be where I would demand you vote to choose your fate, to stay with my troupe or have one of you sacrifice yourselves to the flames and bring this game to an end. However, you’ve all already made your votes clear and due to executive demand we’re obligated to present you with the ending you’ve earned by stealing my crew and forming a united front. You’re all real cute, with your private Plurks. [Wow, bitter much, LP?]

So enjoy your happy, sappy ending. I’m sure Denny’s will love having you. [She snaps her fingers and the fires in the pit finally extinguish.] Show’s over. Fastrada, get the others. Lewis, take the curtains, get the ghost lights, clean up the house. Berthe, take down the page since someone would rather go be a hermit handing out seeds to children than help me with CSS. And turn off the email notifications, I don’t even want to look at this!

[The remaining stagehands, those who didn’t respond to the cast’s attempts at friendship, look at each other and split off, posture a little downtrodden as they slink into the wings or the house. One of them starts to gather up the ghostlights from the side of the stage; another begins stripping the curtains.

The Player herself hops down from her platform, landing easily. For a moment, she stands looking down into the pit, posture tense. One hand rests on her hip; the other hangs at her side, still holding Hans’s winter coat.]

Charlemagne, get the throne.

[Still up there, the Balladeer sidesteps the stagehand as he comes to take the chair, and cautiously begins to make his way down the stairs. The Player pays him no mind; she takes a breath, straightens, and steps around the pit towards the apron.]

And as for all of you - [It’s not clear who she’s addressing now but it’s not the characters.] - we hope you’ve enjoyed your time with us, as participants or even simply as spectators. Hopefully you’ll join us the next time around. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be. [She snaps her fingers and seemingly out of nowhere a hat and cane appear. The coat doesn’t fit the aesthetic, but she slings it over her shoulder nonetheless. The stagehands moving the platform away and taking down the lighting rigs part before her as she turns and strides upstage.]

I’m erasing myself from the narrative
Let future murdergame casts wonder
Where the Player went to
When she left the stage

Go turn your new page,
And I’ll watch this burn...

[She pauses before the last curtain, letting the orchestra continue the song without her for a few phrases.]

I forfeit my rights to all this. Whatever you took from my office, just give it to him. [She jerks her head towards the Balladeer.]

Let him have the memory
Of when this was ours…

...the world seemed to burn...

[Without looking back, she parts the curtain, steps through, and is gone. The remaining stagehands filter out a few moments later, leaving a bare stage and a quiet theatre behind them.

But, of course, there's still a little more magic to do, isn't there?]

Comments

[trettende]

[ Aw, that's cute Bal, you're so excited! ]

We can see it all. I'll follow you anywhere.

[ This beats going home by far... ]

Even, uh... even Arendelle, if you want. I'm sure you'll be welcomed there.

[tellthestory]

....I mean, I'd like to visit Anna and Billy, but I'm not trying to get you frozen.

[TITLE DROPPPP]

[trettende]

[ I cannot believe this, too bad the implication is lost on Hans. ]

Maybe we can work something out. Anna seemed pretty supportive of me kissing you, so... maybe she can talk to Elsa? I don't want to hold you back.

[ As nice as it would be to just have him to himself... that would be the dickish thing to do. And Hans is trying so hard not to be that guy. ]

[tellthestory]

We'll see.

[He's doubtful - people aren't usually cool with attempted assassins, in his experience, and they shouldn't be. But now's not the time to worry about it and maybe upset Hans.]

I'm sure we can work something out. And Hime says we're welcome in her embassy, so if nothing else, we can all meet up there.

[trettende]

I can always hang back with Seymour, if nothing else.

[ He's got a grand total of one friend, at least... But hey, as long as he never has to see his family again, even being exiled from Arendelle is fine. Totally fine. ]

Yeah, Hime seems understanding. Her world sounds surprisingly... normal. Considering she's got blue hair and everything.

[ There are way stranger things with Hime's world but Hans doesn't... know them. Just let him hope. ]

[tellthestory]

[The Balladeer snorts.]

What? Her world's insane.

[trettende]

What, really? But she seems so nice...

[ Hans, you did not unlock Hime's PreCure backstory at all. ]

[tellthestory]

You know God is her legal guardian, right?

[trettende]

Wait, what?

[tellthestory]

The literal god, apparently. Or just the one for Earth. I don't really know what the difference is.

[trettende]

Seriously...?

[ She seemed so normal for a princess.... ]

Well I guess her world is as good as any for us to all meet. She's very forgiving.

[ I mean she doesn't know everything Hans did but she kinda forgave him for the mole thing so that's cool. ]

[tellthestory]

Yeah, and she's not scared of me anymore. Could be fun!

[trettende]

Yeah!

[ Wait. ]

She was scared of you?

[ And not Hans? What witchcraft is this. ]

[tellthestory]

Oh - yeah, really scared! We only talked in my office once before she died, and she was petrified. Literally ran away at the end.

...I wish I'd tried harder to calm her down then. I thought it'd get better with time.

[trettende]

I'm almost having trouble picturing that, you're pretty much the opposite of scary.

[ In the best way, obviously. ]

You couldn't have known things would end this way. Every week it seemed like someone innocent died, versus... people like me or Billy Flynn.

[ Your sins protected you, Hans. ]

[tellthestory]

I was the face of the people keeping you in there, you know. It made sense to me, more or less.

[He wasn't too happy about it, but...she had a right.]

It's funny, at the beginning I thought for sure one or the other of you would kill someone. I hoped you'd think the risk was too great, but once the incentives started...

[trettende]

I guess that's true. [ It's a cute face. ] But anyone who spoke to you could figure out that you weren't thrilled with the setup.

[ No thanks to a certain Leading Player. ]

Honestly, I thought about it. I think if I'd known things in Arendelle ended like they did, I would have tried that first week. And it was especially tempting when the Leading Player sent me that poison, it seemed too good to be true. [ Um, phrasing? ] I knew she was setting me up for something, I just didn't trust her enough to guess whether it'd be good ending or a bad one.

[ Still not making murder sound like a bad thing here, Hans. ]

Plus I mean, yeah, the risk wasn't worth it. If everyone had died because of me, I'd... be a completely different person. I'd still be completely alone.

[tellthestory]

[He listens to the entire thing, raising an eyebrow.]

I bet she would have tried to reward you if you made her happy. She's gotten thrones for people before.

But you wouldn't have liked it in the long run - I don't think she really gets people. She never even seemed like she was friends with that troupe of hers, and they were all together before any of this. You probably would've ended up at odds with her sooner or later, and it would've gone about as well as it went with me.

[trettende]

That could have very easily happened, too. It's not like I planned long-term happiness into any of my schemes before.

[ It's exactly the kind of irony his life is full of. Or was full of, now he seems to finally be bucking the trend. ]

I guess she doesn't have to worry about being lonely or having friends if she never changes. When you think you're above that stuff, it's easy to remain unaffected.

[ Hans actually... kind of gets it. Yikes. ]

[tellthestory]

...I was the first other narrator she ever met. That's what she told me, at least. But I think I believe it - she wouldn't have needed anyone else when she was doing it herself. We spent so much time just talking about what it was like...

[It seems like his feelings about the Player should be simple and easy, after all she did to him and his cast. She's awful, and that should be that.

But it's not. She is, and it still isn't.]

I wish she'd been able to change, too. I don't know that I could've ever spent time around her again, after the whole memory thing, but...I don't know. She didn't think of me like a real person, but...she didn't think of herself that way either. And she should. Even if she decided to be a terrible person, at least she'd be one.

Does...that make sense?

[trettende]

[ Hans can kinda see it. He didn't just decide overnight to stop caring about what his family thought of him. Even now, he can't say he doesn't care about them entirely. A part of him will always care. They're all he knew for most of his life. Even if he finds something better, even if he changes and grows, it took a long couple of weeks to tell himself it was okay to stop caring about their expectations. ]

She's all you knew. [ Outside of some presidential assassins apparently. But just like Hans fell hard for the Balladeer, Hans can see why B would still wish her well. It's not like Hans wants his family to die. Not all the time. ]

I think I understand. When it's how she was written, that's all there is to her. [ It's simple looking at it from the outside, obviously. ] But you know better, you saw her outside of that. Maybe there might have been more to her, if she let herself be.

[tellthestory]

I tried to tell her. But I think...it just wasn't enough. I keep thinking if I'd just talked to her more about it, like you all kept talking to me, maybe it would've been different, but I was too afraid. So we didn't, until I was already mad at her.

[Which probably isn't the best way to start trying to reach out to someone?]

[trettende]

She thought she was above it all. I don't think she realized she could lose until she'd already lost.

[ A feeling Hans knows ironically well. Which might be why he tried so hard to avoid another mess like Arendelle. ]

You did what you could, Bal. You were afraid for a reason. Thinking about things you could have done differently won't change anything. In the end, she made her choice.

[ Or just the way she was written, that's up for debate. ]

[tellthestory]

I...guess she did.

[Or at least, she chose to keep believing that she couldn't make choices? Something like that. It's not her fault that her role was what it was, but now it seems like there's nothing really keeping her there except for her own belief in it.]

I can't help but see a little bit of myself in all of that. Being decent and...not liking murder, I guess, that was part of my original role. I could've easily been different.

[trettende]

She chose not to choose.

[ Well, Hans can kinda sympathize. Without your role, you do something stupid like become the mole or move a body and end up having an emotional breakdown in front of a bunch of people who don't really like you. So yeah sticking to your role is probably the move he would have chosen at the start of he knew how this would end. ]

I understand. The roles we were given are comfortable, they're what we're good at. And in your case and hers... that was all there was. It all came down to you and her making different choices, you couldn't have done that for her. It had to be her choice

I can't say what would have happened if you'd chosen differently, but... Personally, for me it was a choice between staying "safe" or risking it all in trusting other people not to kill me. Eventually safety just wasn't worth it. Keeping up the act kept me safe, but I was alone and miserable. That's why I decided to try to change.