Work Text:
In the centre of the darkness a spotlight is lit; monologue in the making.
Mark’s on one knee. Back straight, chin up, muscles tense, hands outstretched in front.
Like a grandiose, glorious, grotesque victory statue. Like a mocking parody of rigor mortis.
Back straight. Chin up. Muscles tense. Soul aching.
Hands outstretched, and in those hands, carried in the palm of his hand: there is his slick, unmoving, mangled, precious little heart.
“It’s fine, don’t cry, dearest,” says tenderly the surrounding darkness. Meanwhile slender, delicate arms wrap around him from behind, around his torn white shirt and under that his torn chest. Their embracing, cold touch makes the gashes burn.
They could be Celine's hands.
Celine would never touch him like that.
He will not cry; he has no more tears left anyway.
There’s a perfect, contrived, full of flashing teeth grin of an actor on his face - a mask for the occasions when he can’t show how much it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
“Everything will be fine,” repeats the darkness, its tone tingling.
He can’t wipe that big grin off, and he feels it’s slowly cracking the skin on his face.
Every stab wound throbs with the rhythm as his heart should.
One could think there's no suffering after death. There should be nothing after death, no heaven, no hell, nothing.
Bloodshot eyes stare into this serene nothingness.
One could think it wouldn’t hurt that much after so many deaths, but one could also think that expecting different results from doing the same thing over and over and over again: madness.
Maybe he should stop.
Maybe he should just stop counting.
“This is your thirty-seventh time here, you know,” the darkness rustles, his only friend. As evidence, long, pale fingers trace the deep, the desperate, then the angry and the necessary cuts on his skin, like tally marks on the wall of a prison cell. “And I'm so glad you're still coming back. I know it’s not easy for you.”
Mark takes a deep breath he doesn’t need here. The non-existing air is trapped in his damaged lungs.
Now the fingers caress the curve of his shoulder, scratching of the shaped nails. On nice days he admired those dainty fingers running on the piano keys lightly, or shuffling old tarot cards with expertise. On bad days, his mind kept seeing William's strong, rough hands holding them again and again, and every single time he could have screamed.
“But it will help. I promise.” For the thirty-seventh time, he hears this promise, echoing in the silence. It's hard, indeed, but he's starting to believe it somehow.
“Poor thing.” He feels a head resting on his shoulder. Soft curls tickle his neck, and the discreetly potent, too well known fragrance of perfume, heavy passionflower and cloying jasmine, wafting into his nostrils.
Celine.
Then one hand points firmly to his heart, as his darkened blood lazily trickles down his palm, his wrist.
“You offer such beauty to her, and that's how she treats it.”
Celine.
“That’s not fair,” the darkness razzes. The head suddenly lifts with annoyance from his shoulder and Mark’s grin finally can drop and he feels lifeless again.
Celine.
She walks in front of him with the bearing of an empress; her footsteps resound in the void, the blackness floats around her like the hairs of a drowned corpse underwater; like a silk gown blown by a gentle wind in the spring night.
She looks him dead in the eye.
Celine then smiles.
Celine's smile is razor sharp and poisonously sweet and the shadows on that enchantingly beautiful face are too deep.
“You should tell the story of when this happened. When you knelt down like that. When she stood before you like this. When you asked her to accept you like that.” The darkness and Celine’s voice are velvety. “Tell me what happened.”
The actor wishes he could forget his lines.
“I… I told you that story already,” Mark’s words stumble.
Many times. He doesn't know how many times.
He knows it will hurt again. Hurt again. Hurt again.
“Tell me again, please.” It's not a request. “You have to tell it again until it really is just a story. And you know, a story only really depends on who's telling it and how they’re telling it. And shaping and warping a story until you own the past and future of it… That's the point. You can create incredible things like that.” And Celine, who's not Celine, with her eyes twinkling like they never should, glances at the heart. Then, out of character, she gives a cheerful wink. “It will make you feel better in the end, you'll see.”
And Mark, as before, believes it.
Cue.
He starts talking. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“It was a party. Few friends, close and distant the same, gathered in the great hall of a mansion for the night, under the scattered light of the chandelier, as champagne, laughter and big plans bubbled on our tongues. Few friends celebrating other… Friends.” The end of the word barely audible hisses like a snake in hiding. “Enough to make an audience, though. And that was exactly what I… What I wanted. I organised that night myself.”
The scene: stifling colognes and alcohol, screech of patent leather shoes on the marble floor, jingling of heavy jewellery, dull sounds of thrilled chatter, and cheers, cheers, cheers all around.
“Why?” asks the darkness eagerly, with a chill breeze of satisfaction.
“As William's farewell party before he left to fight the war to end all wars. And as Damien's election as mayor... Sweet Damien…”
The tapping of a cane on the stairs. William's weighty footfalls as he helps Damien up the steps. William must have cracked some terribly bad joke, because he laughed uproariously while Damien shook his head with a polite smirk.
Dear, dear, dear friends. As they enter the hall: applause, applause, applause.
The Seer's protective glance behind them silenced all of that, and Mark felt his heart flutter.
“You are such a great pal. How kind of you to think of them,” the Celine before him interrupts.
“But I didn't,” he mutters in a grim daze. “I didn’t think of them at all. Seemingly, maybe, it was their night. But it was all an excuse. I was about to carve out our deserved parts of this glimmering celebration. Mine and hers. I thought: we deserve it. The attention. That happiness. We deserve it, and I’ll get it for us.”
“Yes. Of course you’ve deserved it.”
“All I cared about, all that mattered, was Celine. She was standing in the balcony doorway between the two of those men, half-smiling at her brother, half-smiling at my… Almost-brother then, champagne glass clinking against her teeth, her lipstick left a mark on the rim, and I just couldn't help but think how perfect the two of us would be together.”
Perfect. The lights, the angles, the setting, the stars. Everything was perfect.
A silver spoon hit a crystal glass, ringing of fatal errors.
The whole crowd turned towards them as one.
“The ring was a family heirloom. Wil could have remembered it. Those glittering rubies are hard to forget. I think I will never see them again.”
He should put on that goddamn grinning mask again, he should let it rip his face off.
He can’t.
“So, when the tension was at its peak, I said some uncharacteristic words to the audience, and then I focused solely on Celine. Then… I knelt down like this. She…”
Celine takes a few steps towards him.
“She walked towards me, like that. Slowly. I couldn't… I couldn’t read anything off her face. Maybe a little... Nervousness. Stage fright, I get it. But then she looked down at me. My great Heaven. And in that moment I would have done anything and everything for her. I would have gone to the moon and back for her, I would have moved mountains for her, I would have destroyed empires, I would have rewritten the very fabric of reality, I would have killed and I would have died if she asked me to... And all I ask in return is this: be mine. Simple deal. So I asked her to marry me.”
And he honestly thought he had no more tears left.
These tears are black as despair.
“I asked you not to cry.”
Celine and the darkness empathetically took his hands, and with them his heart, in its cool hands, as if the weight of the world were upon him.
“Please… Please, don’t…” But Mark doesn't even know what he doesn't want.
“Hush, my hero. You still have to finish the story. The Seer said yes, didn't she?” Celine nods her head, innocently, snidely.
His great Hell.
“She said nothing, at first. I thought she was too shocked with joy. Then... She looked back. Back to Damien, and back to William. Just a flash. But in that flash, her eyes showed more passionate emotion than they had ever shown with me. When she turned back, facing me and the people around, she said flatly, alright. That's it. We were engaged. Wil and Damien then offered their brief congratulations and remained silent for the rest of the evening. And Wil was gone with that. He couldn't be at the wedding, of course.”
William.
His fingers move on their own. But he wants them to move, to deepen into the flesh of his pain.
William.
Arteries burst under his fingernails.
“They knew. They knew from the start, and they lied to me. I’m… I’m such a fool, I should have seen that they would betray me, they would leave me, leave me here to die, to rot...”
Wil.
He wants to scream.
“Enough.” Celine's grip gives him the shivers, but the darkness soothes it kindly. He’s panting. “That’s enough. You were no fool, you just loved... An idea of her. Nobly, heroically and blindly. It's not your fault you were taken advantage of. It's not your fault they didn't want you. They're blind too, but now, dearest, you can see. And there are plenty of other, even better ideas out there for you to fall in love with, if that's what your heart desires.”
He wants to breathe.
“But why keep destroying what is already broken? Especially when talking about a beauty like this.” With that, the darkness takes Mark's heart. And Celine, as she twirls the tiny piece of meat in her hand, stops looking at him. “They broke it, they stabbed it, they ruined it almost beyond repair. The Seer, the Mayor, the Colonel… But what's left of it, I'll take care of. I accept you, Mark. I will not leave you, I promise. Let's change this story together, shall we?”
The actor closes his eyes.
“Alright.”
Curtain.
Mark wakes up next to his bed in the darkest room of the Manor, drenched in his own dark blood. He sits up.
And there's nothing. He feels nothing.
He takes the knife from his chest, throws it away.
The wounds are not throbbing. His heart beats no more.
Finally.
Maybe he needs to change things up a bit indeed.
Change things.
Change the past.
Change the future to become yours.
There has to be a story where he gets what he deserves.
A few days later, after a few bottles of red wine, he wanders to the pool outside and drowns.
“Thirty-eight. You know, I honestly liked the glamorous party-setting last time. Tell me more.”
“My pleasure.”
The void smiles at him, and the actor grins back.