Chapter Text
Smoke wreathes around the grand room, its twisting shapes more reminiscent of phantoms than anything else Basil can quite put his finger on. Henry exhales, and another breath of gray plumes from the tip of his cigar. Where Henry and Dorian go, he tries to go, to mitigate the effects of the former's influence; of course, he is not always successful, but finds comfort in his attempts nonetheless.
At the window, Dorian turns, and there is a light in his eyes that borders on feverish, a blush to his cheeks that makes Basil want to look away. "I'd almost forgotten what I came to tell you!" he cries, and claps his hands together, like a child. "I am in love."
Henry arches a dark brow. "Are you, now!"
"Yes," says Dorian, dreamily, "with an actress. Her name is Sibyl Vane."
This is new, Basil thinks; he remembers, of course, poor Sibyl, but the circumstances of the reveal are different—so many little things are different that his memories slip, shimmer with shades of variance.
He forgets so many things about his other life, his first life. Maybe it is for the best.
"An actress," Henry repeats, with another long drag of his cigar. Basil struggles not to cough in its wake. "Well, that is hardly the worst you could do."
"Hardly the worst!" Dorian echoes. He strides forward, and throws his hands up, only to clasp them together as though a speechmaker might, in a moment of practiced passion. "Don't insult her like that, Henry; Sibyl is the loveliest girl I have ever laid eyes on, I am sure."
"I don't insult her; I've loved many an actress, and I know very well that they make good lovers—lovely ones, to use your word—but they are nothing more than lovers."
"You are so cynical, Harry." Dorian sighs. "She is much more than lovely—she's a very talented actress. There is no woman more splendid to love than a talented actress, I think."
"And they must beautiful, or they would never be let on the stage," Henry agrees.
"Really, Harry," says Dorian, with a touch of crossness, and spins to Basil. "You would like my Sibyl," he assures him, and now his voice threads with something like pleading. "Do take my side, Basil, I don't think I can handle an argument."
"An argument!" Henry laughs. "There are no sides, silly Dorian."
Basil swallows, glances down at his own laced fingers. He remembers the ghostlike touch of Dorian's hands, curled around his own, and the taste of his breath too close for comfort: I much prefer you.
"I'm sure I would like her," he manages, "if you do."
"Of course I do—I love her," the younger man asserts, and his lips quirk upwards, in a smile so genuine that it twists Basil's heart to see.
He has no right to be jealous, he reminds himself; he is no better than a scorned admirer, a pretty thing on the side who has received neither Dorian's lips nor his affection, at least not in the entirety with which he desires.
Desire, he thinks, is a strange word.
"Well, that is all for the better," Henry cuts in, and the smoke curls around him, almost cloaking him from view. "I always think one's first love should be one to remember."
"First love? She is my one and only love; I think I have made that clear."
"Oh, I don't think you as shallow as to fall in love only once, my dear Dorian. You are a deeper creature than that; you are too in love with being in love to bind yourself to disappointment."
For a split second, Dorian looks disgruntled, but it quickly flickers away. "Harry, you do disgust me sometimes. Sibyl could never disappoint me."
Henry says, with a slight shrug, "A woman will always lead to disappointment, if you stay for too long."
At last, Basil decides, he has had enough. "Let us talk of something else," he offers.
"No, no, I'm not finished yet!" Dorian cries. "Basil, Harry, you must see her act. Then, you will understand—she is enchanting on the stage, you simply must see her act."
Basil bites his lip, and is entirely too aware that Dorian's gaze is on the motion. Lord Henry answers before he can.
"If you insist. Theater can be trifling, but amusing in small doses—I don't see why not."
"Hmm," says Dorian, and then, "Basil?"
He takes a breath to steel his nerves. He alone knows what is to come; he alone might be able to stop it. "I will come."
***
This time, as Dorian gazes out at the now-vacant stage with an equally empty look in his eyes, Basil does not interrupt.
He lets Dorian lament the loss of his Sibyl's skills; he lets Henry attempt to console him with affirmations of her beauty, with suggestions that they leave. Did he speak the first time, he wonders?—Surely he must have; surely he soothed Dorian, or tried to, to the best of his ability.
He remains silent, until Dorian at last breaks and cries, "Go away, Harry. Leave me alone; my heart is breaking. Go away."
Lord Henry leaves, with a glance back at Basil, a warning glance.
Basil stays, and looks at Dorian's hands, white as they grip the edges of his seat, and wonders what would happen if he held them.
The third act is a blur, a fiasco. Dorian seems to sink only deeper into his misery; the moment it ends, he leaps from his seat.
"Go now, Basil," he calls, over his shoulder, "go home, I must speak to Sibyl."
"No," says Basil, firmly—"you go home, too. Let it rest. Speak to her tomorrow, or next time, and perhaps the performance will be better then."
He knows it will not.
"I must see her," Dorian insists. "I must see why."
Basil dares to reach out, to brush his fingers against Dorian's sleeve. "Not alone," he murmurs.
Dorian hesitates. "Then come."
They find the girl in the greenroom, her face alight in an ecstasy so perfectly averse to Dorian's poorly masked despair. They exchange words, most of which are lost to Basil.
He hears "ill" and "I believed in everything" and "you taught me what reality really is" and when Dorian draws himself up, only to throw himself upon the sofa and exclaim, "You have killed my love"—
That is when he intervenes.
"Listen," he says, with more sharpness than intended. Sibyl's eyes snap to him, but she says nothing. "That is enough, Dorian. You are overreacting, and you are hurting her."
But Dorian averts his eyes, and they settle on Sibyl, who blinks in confusion, in growing pain. "I am not overreacting, Basil, she has killed my loved—you have killed my love." He spins back to the girl, his eyes flashing. "It was your acting that made me love you; it was the way you spun words, and captured emotion; it was your intellect and understanding of someone else's joy and pleasure and pain—and now there is none of it!"
"Dorian, she was only trying to have her own joy and pleasure and pain," says Basil, with an attempt at a gentle tone.
"Well, she has brought only pain to me!" Dorian snaps, rounding on him. "I don't love her anymore; I've explained myself. I don't want to think of her."
"You can't mean that!" Sibyl cries, before Basil can. She flings herself before Dorian, and the painter's poor heart wrenches at the sight; before he can stop himself, he thinks: we are one and the same, we are two of a kind.
"You—you can't mean that," she repeats. Tears prick at her eyes. "I can be better—I can improve my acting, you were right, I should have performed better, I see that now—"
Dorian steps back, and his eyes are cold, and his feature are distant, distant in their mask of perfection.
Basil cannot help but flinch.
"Goodbye, Sibyl," says Dorian, quietly. "Come on, Basil, I am leaving."
He sweeps out without a backward glance, leaving Sibyl crouched on the ground before where he once stood, with a sob in her throat.
Basil hesitates.
The young actress looks up, and there is misery written across her face—lovely indeed, just as lovely as Dorian said. "Will you be cruel to me, too?" she says, and her eyes pierce him. "Will you be cruel as the man I loved?"
He kneels down, tentatively, and takes out his handkerchief to dry her tears. "I am sorry that he was cruel. I have no intention of making it worse."
"I loved him," she sobs, and clutches at the fabric. He relinquishes it. "I loved him, and I tried to show him—"
"I know," he murmurs. "I understand."
She glances up; perhaps something in the brokenness of his voice, the rasp in his throat, gives him away. "You do?"
"I do."
He helps her stand, and she wobbles slightly, but braces herself against him, still trembling. "You will be all right," he promises her, and dares to stroke a hand through her disheveled hair. "It hurts, but you will be all right."
"I am nothing without my acting," she sniffs. "And I can never act without thinking of him now."
"You are not nothing without your acting!" he cries. "I don't know you, but I do know that! You are a whole person, just as I am without my art."
"You are an artist?" she says, hesitantly.
"A painter."
She draws her arms close to her body, folded across her breast. "Tell me of your painting, then," she orders, but her voice holds less command and more plea.
And he does.
And when the night has grown much older, and he slips out of the theater with a tear-stained handkerchief clutched in his hands, he can do nothing but hope it was enough.