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Daniil spits the blood out of his mouth and wipes his lips off with the back of his hand. He's been here before, done this before, rehearsed these scenes, read these lines. The clock ticks and pulls his strings elsewhere. Time to get a move on. He can't be late, not for this, not for the main event.
It's getting so hard to breathe. He'll cough a lung right up, one of these days. He's always hated the imagery of that sentiment and the way he thought, as a kid, of the lungs still working, breathing outside of his body until this fragile thing collapses. It's the closest thing he has to a memory now, and that eats at him like acid stripping a surface clean. He's spent a lot of time thinking about how he'll die, bargaining away the chips on how much life he's got left in him before he ends it all. That's how he wound up with such an impossible goal: set a timer for yourself so it never goes off.
They used to say suicide was linked to narcissism. Only people who thought their crimes were too big for god to forgive killed themselves, and that's why the act was a sin. Daniil knows now that there's no god; not even a cruel one would go this far.
But something pulls his strings. He has no motivation or will at this point. What was it Burakh had said? 'Any choice is right, so long as it's willed?' He'd have to wonder what the man would think of that philosophy if he could see the darkened corners of Daniil's mind.
It almost comforts him to know he wouldn't care. Burakh doesn't even seem to notice this scene is one they've played out a hundred times, and Daniil's getting sick of it. Mark's called him out on being an awful actor, a pain to work with, but that's just a fair tradeoff. It's not like he auditioned for his part, no. He just sort of got stuck with it, and unlike Burakh his hands are still tied to strings around his wrists.
He likes to stare off into space sometimes. When Burakh shares a scene with him, but it hasn't started. He's good at looking emotionless, vapid. No one asks him what he's thinking about when his eyes glaze over, about the different productions of this play where he's the lead, or at least a character with better lines. He liked the bit about hands, but then he knows that he's biased: he spends these moments of levity looking at Burakh's and picturing something else. Those rusty scissors, maybe, cutting him loose. Everyone else gets a chance to ask him to run away with them, and all Daniil gets is an assumption the man would have cut him up to get papers that don't even exist yet.
Maybe he should. He can run this route to piss Mark off, ad lib and eat the papers. At the absolute worst option (or maybe, the best) Burakh will kill him. It's the closest he'll ever feel to being held by him, the closest he'll get to agency unless this troupe gets better funding soon.
Then again, he's tried something like that before. Rinse, repeat. Spit the blood out of his mouth. Wipe his face off with a dirty towel and think about how late he can show up to this evening's performance. Mark tried that once, a lesson for his insolence. Intermission. Put the main show on hold and make him live through a day of illness. Killed Burakh off to make a point: don't touch the props.
Except Daniil is the prop here.
For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. That's on him for trying to exert control. And it's on him for ever coming to this town, to this no-place, where he's so wrapped up he doesn't think he could go home if he even wanted to. It should scare him that he's put here with his life destroyed, nothing to return to, and now he's questioning his own desires. His own wants. His own feelings.
"You're running late." He had to expect at some time or other that Mark would show up. It had to be possible for him to leave the theatre, even if he rarely does. Daniil smirks, humorless, at the desk. "Dress rehearsal started fifteen minutes ago. Need I remind you this production stops for no one?"
"I'm supposed to be heartless, right?" He starts his movements slow and deliberate, picking things up off his desk and putting them carefully into his bag. "Uncaring, selfish?"
"If there's a point to this character analysis," he tapes his cane on the ground, more for emphasis than assistance, "Please get to it."
Daniil turns, and gestures. "Call it method acting." Mark scowls at him. "That's what you wanted, isn't it? Wake us up, throw us in these roles but in real life, to see how we do, study how we act?" Mark doesn't respond. He thinks about his first notes, his first feedback. 'I'm glad you'll be leaving,' he thinks Mark had said. 'You're a dangerous person. Dealing with you would be an arduous task.' Something like that. "You've gotten fantastic results," he drawls.
The man behind him sighs heavily. "What a phase you've gotten yourself into. Is this thanks I get for offering you a leading role?" He can see it even woth his back turned, Mark shaking his head.
"You've made my life into a plot point, a character reference, not the other way around." Daniil shakes his head. "Remember: I'm still the first Dankovsky. Its Burakh who's on number - what is it again?"
His pithy retort is cut off by a click of tongue against teeth, by Mark snapping off, "I don't know, haven't you been counting? You've fallen in love with all of them." Part of Daniil's problem has always been that he shows his hand too soon, as when he whips around with scalpel in hand to glower. Mark grins at him something cruel and gloating, a hunter well aware he's got his prey in teeth. "Oh, did you think I hadn't noticed? He's dense, but I am your equal, Bachelor." Daniil turns and throws his scalpel into the bag. "Is that what this tantrum is about? That you weren't cast as the romantic lead?" Daniil feels his face flush, and there's no way to go without answering. Not how he's gone about it. "Oh, maybe next season, my dear. Perhaps we'll dip our toes into magical realism. Maybe you'll be cast as soulmates, or the heroine dying of some disease only true love's kiss can cure. Would you insist on coughing up flower petals, or will blood do?"
There's no escaping the mockery. He knows now, whatever place this is - alive or not, breathing or not - it's hell.
He picks up the revolver with unsteady hands. He doesn't point it, or anything. Just turns with it still in hand, and faces his director. "You've planned for everything," Daniil says. "So tell me what happens. Tell me what the script says if I shoot myself."
"Oh, you wouldn't. You haven't hit your heights of despair yet, and this play isn't like the last." Mark tilts his head, mocks at something understanding. "If you must go on with this charade, how about: The Haruspex is very upset! He finds your lifeless body when he comes to plead for your assistance. How could you do this to yourself, en-Daniil, when you had so much left to hope for! What of your dreams of utopia, your ambitions in the Capital, your noble goal to defeat Death herself? And he was just getting to know you, just getting to love -"
"And what if I shoot you?" Daniil snaps. "Does someone else take your place? Clara, maybe? The Changeling? Whichever one sees the strings?"
Mark rolls his eyes. "It wouldn't go off, you nitwit. It's just a prop."
Swallow. Something hard, like disappointment. "It wouldn't shoot me either, would it?"
"What do you think?"
Of course. Because even his attempt to self-terminate in the marble nest had been ineffective. And he'd tried, and tried, and tried even when he pretended to be doing fine. "I don't dream of utopia," he mumbles.
Mark scoffs at him. "Of course you do. Perhaps not so literally, but you do aspire to break the limits imposed on the human spirit. Don't you get it?" He points, and leans. "Utopia is not a place, it's an idea. An abstract. A theatre-in-the-round. God knows utopia as a location is impossible - but then, that's what's been driving you mad. You've thought too hard about it."
He feels that the scene is closing, that any last comments he has must be brought tied to the end. "Then what are you doing with the Utopians?" Daniil asks. Mark hums in question. "You said the Utopian ideology is breaking the limits imposed on humanity, but you're doing the opposite. You're imposing the limits. You're directing."
Daniil's head lifts to see Mark pull back, rock onto his heels. "That, my dear fellow, is an answer you've yet to unlock. And you will just have to wait your turn." He snaps his fingers, and all lights go out.
When the light comes back, Daniil is on stage.