Chapter Text
(Present)
Daniel was alone.
He walked through the forest, his right leg stiff as he was forced to swing it around awkwardly as he walked, so he didn’t have to bend his knee. His leg still ached as he walked, trying to keep pressure off of it.
He thought he’d be angrier.
He was angry, furious, honestly, but it was a calm fury. He didn’t frown, or scowl, his face likely looked impassive, bored. He thought he’d be ripping things apart now, storming down to that stupid camp where everything had gone wrong and finally getting his revenge. But he was angry in a calm way. And he was in pain. There’d be no storming around in his state, certainly no running, or kicking. All important things when fighting for vengeance, as one could never go when something would go awry.
What was the line in the play he’d seen ages ago? The one with the vengeful wizard obsessed with crackers? Ah yes, “Revenge! Vengeance! Revengeance!”
Daniel would get his revengeance, he was sure. Just, not at the moment.
Something caught his eye.
Something white.
He paused to look. It was a rosebush, miraculously growing in the wild, with white roses. Daniel took a few steps closer to the bush, looking at it with an almost childlike love.
Daniel hated almost everything, and flowers were no exception. They were often teaming with bugs, and of course flowers grew from the dirt, and dirt was filthy. But Daniel loved white.
Daniel didn’t love white because it was “pure” as some people believed. He wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why those twats back at Camp Cambell assumed he wore white. He knew the truth. White was the opposite of pure. White was the only colour that was completely sterile, and untouched by the world. Black was the purest colour, because black was every single colour combined into one for the human eye.
White was no colour. White was unnatural. White was rare, for the most part. White reflected colour and heat. White reflected everything. Which meant, according to his bible and all the sermons he’d been to since he was young, that white was the best colour to reflect the negativity constantly coming from space.
He reached forward, plucking the rose that had caught his attention. It was the prettiest one on the bush. He inspected it carefully. He couldn’t see any dirt on the stem, and there were no ants or beetles hiding in the petals.
Daniel twirled the white rose between his thumb and forefinger, watching as the petals spun. The rose was perfectly in bloom, petals open, bud bright in the centre. It was completely white, not yet browned with rot as it would be when it began to wilt. This was likely the most perfect Daniel would ever see the rose. Soon it would droop, and wilt, and turn brown, and then the petals would break off, leaving the stem bare and ugly.
Daniel both loved, and hated this thought.
He’d been obsessed with death, life, and the everything, since as long as he could remember, and even longer before. It was almost all he thought about.
A sharp pain sparked in his thumb, burning. He gently set the rose down on the earth, inspecting his thumb, and the bead of blood on top, pricked by a thorn. He picked another rose, one that was much less perfect, with brown barely touching the very edge petals. He didn’t want to sully the perfect white one, but this one was already damaged.
He let the drop of blood fall to the rose. It lands on a petal towards the centre, an almost insignificant drop of red.
A thought came to Daniel, one he didn’t immediately push away or try to bury in his mind.
This was his David rose.
He pricked all nine off his other fingers on one of the thorns on the David rose, letting nine drops of blood fall to join the first on the tainted white petals. Scowling, he grabbed the rose with one hand and the tip of the stem with his other, twisting and yanking the head away from the stem, tossing it to the dirt like a toddler having a tantrum.
He felt like a toddler.
Small, and helpless.
And he hated feeling helpless.
(Past)
Daniel played violin. And he played it well. Violin was the reason he was in trouble. He had thought he was liking school.
He liked learning, to an extent, though he listened to his parent’s words and repeated back everything he learned each day, so they could correct him and teach him the proper history and facts. He was good at school, but he was not good at friends, and that was the whole reason he had been put into kindergarten in the first place.
He had made friends in kindergarten, some of whom he even considered friends in first grade. It was second grade when the entire school seemed to turn away from him, knowing he was different.
But no one cared in kindergarten. The other kids never questioned why he wouldn’t play with them on the playground, or come over after school. They even tolerated him having meltdowns over the times where his outfits had gotten ruined or stained. Even the teacher didn’t mind this, just asking his parents to leave a few outfit changes at school for the days he screamed over spilled grape juice or accidentally melted chocolate.
In first grade, some of his friends drifted away, even though Daniel learned to control his meltdowns-somewhat-and tried to teach his friends his religion, like his parents had suggested he do. He’d gotten one whole Kindergarten year for learning in a school, for playing with other children and taking naps.
It was first grade that his parents sat him down, and told him that he should try to explain himself to the other children. To talk about all the incredible facts that he knew, so that they would want to worship Xemüg too. Daniel had been enthralled with the idea of being able to go to church with his friends, but the more he told, the more the others stayed away from him, like he carried the plague.
Even his closest friendships were gone by the end of the year, parents pulling children away from him at pickup, and whispering to them not to play with him, not to give him an invitation to their birthdays.
Daniel tried not to care. He never went to the birthdays anyways, Xemüg would never approve. But he did miss getting a heartfelt invitation, with a date and a place, and interesting things to do. Surely the mind wasn’t bad. Xemüg wouldn’t care if he pretended with his stuffed animals that he was at Waylen’s birthday at the zoo, seeing all the exotic animals, or Annalise’s birthday at the ice skating rink, learning to glide over ice for the very first time.
He kept the invitations in a box at the back of his closet, occasionally opening it up to look inside, before putting it away and shutting the closet door tight, fearing the colourful invitations might taint the white of his bedroom if the sun hit them from his window just right.
By second grade, there were no friends, unless he made them up himself, and the kids at school had started talking behind his back. Daniel did his best to ignore them, when he had first told his parents, they had told him that if Daniel could not get new followers from going to school, it could be a good lesson on ignoring what the world spat at him. After all, they told him, he would be laughed at, made fun of, even persecuted for his beliefs, just because they were different than others.
Just because he was raised with the truth.
It worked for him, for the most part. Whenever he overheard a not-so-subtle comment about him or his family, he would take a deep breath, and remember the kids at school were repeating the lies their parents had raised them with.
But that hadn’t worked one day, during his music lesson.
Daniel played violin, both in and out of school. He had a slightly dinged up, out of tune violin gifted to him by the school for his violin lessons, and his prized violin, the one he kept safely at home, not to be tainted by the brats in his school. There were only two other kids taking violin that had lessons with him, and they were far behind compared to Daniel.
Daniel wasn’t that great at math, or science, and he was only okay at art, but he excelled at music. He had been playing since he was three, and his father had been paving the way for him to learn since he was two and a half.
He had no memory of this, of course, but his mother would pull him onto her lap, gently playing with his hair as she played the video tapes on their TV. Daniel would be sitting in his father’s lap. In the first few videos, he’d squirm around and babble over the violin, but as he grew older he was more silent and still, watching the violin.
It was another violin when he was younger, the smallest possible size, rented for a few years from the music store until he grew too big for it. His dad would position it under Daniel’s chin, and hold the bow in Daniel’s hand, moving it like a puppet over the strings.
Back and forth.
It wasn’t quite music, not yet, but it would be.
As he grew, so did his music. His father would smile at him, calling him a prodigy. Mother would explain, “You remember every single key there is. You play by ear, and memory. Most people can’t do that. They need to look at sheet music to play a song. You only need to hear the song played once.”
Her words made Daniel puff up in joy.
The day before the dreaded music lesson, had been a Sunday. The very first Sunday where Daniel was to play his violin in the church.
He hadn’t played much, just a single church song that the few people in the choir sang along to, but afterwards, hearing everyone praise him, telling him how Xemüg had blessed him, and was proud of him, he’d been glowing with love and appreciation. He loved the family in his church.
And then the music lesson.
The music lesson with Kendrick Holloran.
Words: 1,768