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The troll greeted Frank like an old friend. A light rain pattered against the bridge above him, and even with the other people milling around, Frank felt like it was just the two of them.
He’d made a plan to return to the troll as soon as he’d found out they were playing a show in Seattle. He was hoping it would provide him with little relief from the uncertainty of his life, and he was not disappointed. In a sea of tour dates and unfamiliar cities, the troll grounded him, made him feel like he knew himself a little better. The troll asked nothing of him, and after years of being expected to give away small pieces of himself, the troll’s steady, unassuming gaze was exactly what Frank needed.
It hadn’t been easy, the explosion of their third album, moving to Los Angeles, battling the press and the label and sometimes the fans. But most of all, they fought their own demons. The darkness that had engulfed them in creating the album had been hard to escape, and most of them were still clawing their way out, pretending like they were doing just fine when really their heads were barely above the surface.
The tour wasn’t much easier; there was so much more expected of them than any other tour they’d done. Now they had to deal with working themselves to the bone long after they’d broken. They had to keep upping the ante, making their shows more theatrical and therefore more physically and mentally demanding. That wasn’t to say Frank didn’t love it, that he didn’t play his heart out every night while Gerard wheeled in on a gurney and pranced around in a hospital gown. He did. He loved the hysteria and the fire and the string quartet and the opera singers. He loved every second of it. But through it all, he’d lost himself.
The Black Parade wasn’t just a persona they could take on and off as easily as a mask. It had swallowed them whole, and now that they were in the belly of the beast they had to decide whether to fight their way out or accept their fate. It scared Frank to death that he didn’t know which would be worse. It scared him even more that he kind of liked the beast. Like the way it rumbled and shook, the way he could never be sure of his footing, the way everything they had built could tumble down at any moment. He always did thrive in chaos.
The troll brought him back, though, to that summer when he’d first seen it and their biggest challenge was the bus’s broken air-conditioning. He remembered wondering what it would be like to stand in this same spot after his life had carried on around him. He never expected things to be this different. He remembered how lonely he felt last time he was here, not knowing where he stood with Gerard. As painful as that had been, he now longed for those days.
While Frank had survived – even thrived in some malevolent, self-destructive way – the monster that was their third album, Gerard had been eaten alive by it. The project had consumed him, and his personality had been overwhelmed by the leader of the Black Parade. Frank saw it the first time Gerard put on the costume, how his posture changed and his eyes darkened. Frank saw it when Gerard emerged from the bathroom with his hair a bright, shiny platinum; when he stopped eating, when he snapped at the smallest provocation, when he finally lost his fight against the character he’d created. Gerard never really stood a chance.
It wasn’t so much that they had broken up as it was they had fallen apart. Living in that house, practicing and recording twelve hours a day and sometimes more, there wasn’t room for Frank and Gerard to carry on like they had before. The darkness they had all been plunged into forbid them from seeing anything past their noses, especially any means of finding happiness in their prison. Frank and Gerard had simply given up. The worst part, though, was that it had been silent. They never spoke a word of their relationship, not even now. They were friends, sure, close friends, even. But not like they had been.
Now, staring at the troll, Frank remembered. He remembered he light buzzing that had grown to a deafening crescendo in his heart and got even louder with every kiss and touch he shared with Gerard. He remembered the nights they stayed up late talking or cuddling or fucking or not doing anything at all, just lying side by side, feeling the warmth radiate off the other. He remembered the happiness that he felt, unlike anything he’d experienced before. He remembered being in love, he remembered being whole.
The troll stared back, unforgiving, unassuming, undemanding. The troll made Frank think that maybe he should go looking for those pieces he’d given away, that maybe he should start to put himself back together, become whole once more.
He knew right where to start.