Work Text:
On a cloudy day, just before the sun hit the horizon, a crowd gathered around a stage of an old theatre. Each footstep brought up a cloud of dust, and the final cry of daylight filtered through the broken boards of the ceiling. The crowd spoke in hushed tones. Suspense was building. Across the town were posters, advertising the final performance of Nadia “Eve” Zvelda and Zuke West’s stage play series “Rupturika”. Soon, the final remaining lights went dim, and a hush went through the crowd.
Movement behind the curtain. Breaths were held. The play was beginning.
The curtains rose to reveal her: Nadia, the Queen of Rupturika, draped in shades of red. The only thing that remained of Queen Nadia’s normal outfit was her pale, billowing skirt. Yet even that was dyed a dusty gray.
A single piano note rose, struck, and faded away as the Queen raised her hands up towards the heavens, as though regarding a miracle brought on by some unknown god. Yet beneath her crimson veil, the Queen’s face was cold and still. The performance had begun.
The piano sang a solemn tune as the sovereign clasped her hands to her chest. A high note hit the air, carrying Nadia with it, fading as she hit the floor and smoothly spun. She turned out of her pirouette to face the crowd, lingering at first position. She bowed her head. Waited. Then she bent at the waist, hands keeping watch at her sides in silent suspense. The Queen of Rupturika opened her mouth, took in a breath, and began to sing.
“Whether near or far,” she sang, raising to face the crowd. Her voice was deep and smooth, smothering the audience as it filled the room, leaving space for nothing else but its own suffocatimg strength. “I am always yours.” Her left hand rose, meeting the hand of a familiar shadow against the curtain. The King of Rupturika. Nadia’s husband, played by Zuke himself. “Any change in time,” The Queen and her shadow drew closer, yet no King appeared from behind the curtain as their foreheads tenderly met. “We are young again…”
“Lay us down,” Nadia’s voice began to shake, yet her poise remained graceful as she turned away from the shadow of the King. “We’re in love.” With each beat held, she took another step, further and further away. Again. She raised her hand, hesitated. His shadow turned away and disappeared. Like the branches of a willow tree, she slumped, hands falling to her sides.
Breathe in. Out.
The concert hall rang with a long, mournful tone, more a cry of pain than a song. She spun, jumped, danced, voice barely remaining steady. The ruined hall rang with her grief. Back and forth across the stage she leapt, movements raw and unrehearsed. It was pure emotion, the music carrying her limbs where it wished. It was barely a minute, yet it felt like hours before the music resigned its hold on her, the radiant Queen of Rupturika collapsing to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. Nadia locked the audience in her endless teal eyes, forcing them to share her grief. Slowly, her head lowered, and the next verse began.
“In these golden years,” her voice warbled, the shadow reappearing with a hand on her shoulder. It lasted only a second. “Many things will change.” Her turned head revealed only an empty stage, a hand raised, a silent plea. “But the way I feel,” Nadia’s voice cracked on an inhale. Slowly, she stood, head and left hand reaching out to stage right, waist turned to the left. Voice rising, hand closing, she allowed her head to lower. “Will remain the same.”
“Lay us down.” Her hands were clenched to fists, and the stage began to shake. The audience let out a startled cry, yet her voice did not waver as she stepped forward. “We’re in love!” She faced the audience, hands raised in a mirror of the play’s start. Her voice rose, rose, rose, as she curled up tight, tight, tight. It coalesced into a great knot of intent, pushing up against reality, straining to break free. Everything stopped, and the stars themselves held their breath.
For a moment, all was quiet. Then, like a wave, her voice came crashing down once more, the strength of her song twisting reality to her will, air shimmering like frost. As her voice cracked, so too did the knot, shattering into sharp shards of grieving glass that only served to strengthen her already powerful voice. All pretenses of performance vanished beneath the sheer weight of her emotion, and she cried of her suffering, her sorrow, her hurt!
Nadia's - Eve's? - feet began to lift from the ground, weightless above her music. The backing track scraped and warped, distorted with the electricity pumping through the stage like the beating of her own heart. Stage lights glowed searingly, mere seconds away from bursting. Shining down upon the performer, they wrapped her in a cocoon of shadow. As both of her arms raised to welcome the light, they rejoiced in the coming of a second pair, and then a third. Before the audience was the twisted silhouette of a broken butterfly, awakened to a scale of power previously unknown, and they had been the sole witnesses to her metamorphosis; her ascension.
As Eve’s voice flickered and faded out, so too, did the lights. The world began to recover from the racing high of expression, carried gently to the ground by the final notes of the wistful violin. Eve, too, touched the floor, haloed by a shimmering glow. Even that soon faded, leaving her exhausted form behind. Eight pairs of shaking limbs dipped into a bow, before collapsing to the ground in a dead faint. Of all the things that had happened that night, Eve’s sudden unconsciousness was the only thing that caused the audience to panic.
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In the back of the crowd stood two figures, unmoving: A tall man with blue hair, and a dimly pale woman.
The man looked upon the scene with numb horror. It took him several seconds to tear his eyes away from her, from Eve, and several more for him to run.
The woman stared in silence, the burned and rusted gears of her mind beginning to turn once more. Beneath her crimson eyes, a spark. An idea. A power.
The sun fell on the ruined old theatre, carrying witness to two worlds changed:‹/p›
The broken girl lying on the stage floor, her love buried and caged deep within herself, protected so that nobody could ever hurt it again.
And the tiny floating city, soon to grow past the days of flooded, flickering lights, thanks to the very beginnings of an incredible invention.
Two deaths, rebirths, ascensions. They were the witnesses, and now, you are too.