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Rhodes Island being equipped with a ballroom is a fact Shalem can’t tell if he’s surprised by or not. It’s rather nice, in his opinion. It’s hardly the most fanciful stage, but he finds its mere existence impressive enough—besides, he imagines his standards are higher than most when it comes to these matters, and that all isn’t to say it looks the same as the rest of the metal corridors that line the ship. It’s full of warm lights and mahogany wood, splashes of white accents to keep things from getting too dreary. Given that it’s situated towards the center of the ship, it makes up for the lack of windows with drapes and chandeliers. It’s all rather tasteful, in his opinion.
Currently, the room is in use, which is how he found out about its existence a handful of weeks ago. Now it’s full of bureaucrats, as well as various CEOs of various pharmaceutical companies—really, too many for him to remember.
He isn’t required to be there, but he puts on a nice face and comes anyway. There’s wine, but he only takes a flute because his companions take one. He drinks enough for them to remember the glass in his hand, and then lets it sit half empty the rest of the night as he makes idle conversation with them. He slips away the moment he’s sure he won’t be missed.
He’s mostly there for appearances, to make sure he doesn’t come off as too anti-social—he’s politely turned down one too many outings to skip out on this one—and, in the end, he can’t say he isn’t at least a little interested in having an idea of who it is Rhodes Island has been rubbing shoulders with as of late. Even if it’s just for his job. He doesn’t tend to concern himself with politics, so it’s only a vested interest.
He’s far more interested in the shadow lurking in one of the dark ballroom corners.
Phantom is an equal master at looking perfectly in his element and looking completely and utterly out of place. He carries himself like someone who’s lived in a court their whole life, a person with words that are far more dangerous than any blade they could wield—and then he shrinks back into his little alcove the moment someone comes close enough to notice that the thing in the corner isn’t quite a shadow, but in fact a person, and the illusion is ruined. He’s quite the enigma.
Shalem thinks both of those observations, as oxymoronic as they seem, are true when it comes to Lucian.
Shalem has a strange song and dance that he’s been stepping along to with Phantom. Strange only on Shalem’s end, perhaps—he can’t seem to figure out any rhyme or reason to how Phantom treats him, or how he feels towards him. It’s frustrating, and when he thinks about it, he finds he’s spent far more time mulling it over than he would have liked. In the end he never figures out anything that he didn’t already know.
The most he’s been able to figure out is this: It was easy to dedicate himself to saving Phantom. It was easy to carry him out of the castle, to dress his wounds and keep him out of the grasp of the Crimson Troupe, no matter how temporarily. The issue, as it turns out, is that it’s much less easy to settle down into a life next to the person you’ve spent your life both fearing and admiring.
It would be a lie to say Shalem hadn’t been hoping things would go back to how they used to be at Rhodes Island, back when he first joined their ranks—his farce of a normal, average life. And they have, largely. He knows he sees Phantom more than most other operators do, but those moments are fleeting enough to let him continue on as if nothing has changed.
Sometimes, when he first joined, he would let himself pretend when he closed his eyes; pretend this average life was really his, was truly something he earned of his own merits.
But now it’s not easy to pretend, no matter how briefly, and there’s this terribly frustrating revelation that he’s stumbled upon: He isn’t satisfied with his quiet life anymore.
The reason for it is an amalgamation of things, he’s decided. The old wounds of his past have been freshly opened. There’s so many new, dubious qualities in his life now. The unease will go away, he wants to believe—but he’s always been a realist bordering-on-pessimist, and he’s never been able to deceive himself the way he has others. He’s an anxious person to a fault.
Shalem quietly sets his wine glass on a table as he passes, easily skirting to the outer rings of the crowd. Of course that’s where Phantom would hide. Shalem finds it a bit relieving—he can manage well enough, but he’s not built for these long formal outings.
“I hadn’t expected to see you here,” Shalem says, in lieu of a greeting.
If Phantom is surprised to see him, he doesn’t show it. He does, however, shift his weight from one foot to the other. It doesn’t make him seem any less glued to the spot.
“I had not expected to be here myself,” he admits, looking perturbed. His ears are pinned back, ever so slightly. “I had heard the commotion and decided to investigate. This place is…” Phantom trails off, but he doesn’t need to say anymore. Shalem understands.
“It looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?”
Phantom nods, never taking his eyes off the center stage. Shalem can’t help but watch him as he drinks it in—he’s done so much observing of the dance floor himself, that it’s a relief to see someone else in his place. Looking at it like this feels like looking at it through different, fresh eyes.
“I don’t suppose I could talk you into giving me a dance, Mr. Phantom?” Shalem asks.
Phantom is something of an open book. Of course, he can act—beautifully, showstoppingly, can he act—but once the shutters to his talent go down, it’s like he forgets he isn’t just an observer peering through an open window.
(Shalem, for his part, finds it unfortunately endearing.)
Phantom’s frown is delicate as he glances at Shalem with a thin sheen of confusion. He mulls it over, a twist in his lips; Shalem is quietly thankful that Phantom doesn’t question him over his sudden formalities.
Quite honestly, his suggestion being entertained is already more than he had expected. He’d meant it as more to poke fun at Phantom’s presence at the party, to lighten the mood, but—
“If that is what you desire.”
—well, he can’t say he wholly dislikes this turn of events.
Phantom moves away from the corner, stepping into the light for the first time in the evening. He holds out his hand for Shalem to take. He’s regal, bathed in the light, and once again Shalem is struck with how easy it is to fall into place like this. Phantom carves a spot for himself so readily where Shalem had been left floundering.
He takes the lifeline offered to him.
Everyone in the Troupe knew how to dance. Shalem had already been in practice when he was still awkwardly growing into his own body, not even ten. Dance was one of the first things they were taught, as not an uncommon number of the Troupe’s plays consisted of ballroom scenes.
They had been paired off without too much thought, and being that there was an odd number of them, Shalem ended up next to another boy. A feline, specifically. He had a dreary look to him—not that many of them were much different—and a head of brown hair that was close to hiding his eyes. Shalem didn’t go very long before learning that the boy’s name was Lucian. Even before he was known as the Blood Diamond, his praises were being sung.
Malnourished as they were, they stumbled over themselves, regardless of any skill or lack thereof. Lucian’s hands in Shalem’s were clammy, yet firm. It’s not terribly different to how they are now; Phantom’s hands holding Shalem’s, just two set pieces in the background of a stage far grander than them. The only difference now being the years of experience between them. There’s a new story on the brink of unfurling in front of them, and there’s no telling how it will play out.
Shalem will not allow himself to be disillusioned once more.
Phantom slips into his spot as the lead effortlessly, without any consideration for a different role. Shalem doesn’t say anything, falling into place after him. He’s always taken the role of understudy. It’s a comforting spot for him—he isn’t sure if that’s because of its familiarity, or because he’s naturally a deferential person. Maybe after all these years, it’s become both.
Shalem follows Phantom’s footsteps into the throngs of people amid the dance floor, their heels clicking against sleek wood below them. Like this, Phantom walks without a hint of hesitancy or question. If he makes a mistake, he leans into it and turns it into something beautiful, something intentional. Shalem’s fingers twitch in the hand guiding him.
Even after all these years, he can’t hide his quiet, simmering envy.
He doesn’t vie for the attention or life Phantom led for it—no, the thought of that leaves him on the verge of nausea. What he does long for is the unfettered talent Phantom holds, the well inside him that Shalem was never quite able to tap into. At least, not in the same way, and never to the same degree.
But, at the end of the day, Shalem is first and foremost an appreciator of the arts. He imagines he’ll be able to fawn over Phantom’s talent until they day he dies—quietly, to himself. He doesn’t have much pride to swallow, regardless of talent. All that’s left in its place is only an insufferable longing as they follow each other’s steps, a back-and-forth that’s like second nature.
The two of them spin in tandem for a third, fourth, fifth time, chests pressed only breadth away from each other. Shalem’s sleeves catch air and flutter to kiss the bare skin along Phantom’s wrists. Dancing, as always, is as natural as breathing for them, and Shalem wouldn’t be hard pressed to believe that the world around them has melted away, that they’re now back within the depths of the castle.
The world spirals away in the corner of his eye, and he swears he can almost smell the stench of a candle’s smoke—
—But then the orchestra swells, clinging to the last remaining notes of their piece as they plateau, and finally let the song rest where it lays. The mournful lights of the castle blink out around them, until they’re swept away by the gentle lights of the Rhodes Island landship.
Shalem blinks. He’s been holding onto Phantom for too long.
“It appears we joined a little too late,” Phantom says as Shalem hurriedly takes his hands back, folding them in front of himself for a lack of anywhere else to put them.
“It would seem that way,” he agrees. He eyes the dispersing crowds, the growing distance between himself, Phantom, and everyone around them.
Shalem squeezes the vice he has his fingers in tighter. He’s often stuck holding up pleasantries, idle conversations about things like the weather and what they’re serving in the cafeteria today, but he’s never been good at talking when it comes to Phantom.
Once they’ve settled into silence like this, no distractions to busy themselves with, Shalem always feels like he begins to fall. Falling back into memories he wishes he didn’t have, a life he didn’t want to lead, a body marred with mistakes. He can pretend as much as he wishes when he’s on his own—even when with other Rhodes Island personnel—but never with Lucian, because Lucian is the only one who knows what he hides beneath his skin, firmly rooted in the space between his ribs. A sickening thing that beats and bleeds.
Phantom has the ability to tear this fragile life he’s built to shreds, to force him back into the depths of everything he both fears and desires.
But, instead of running or hiding, Shalem asks him, “Would you like to get something to eat?”
The buffet Rhodes Island boasts is expansive, and rather familiar. Feasts like this weren’t a common part of his childhood, but they were memorable.
Once the Crimson Troupe had taken their pick of miserable orphans, vetted and clothed them, they set off to the castle from Shalem’s nightmares. When they stepped inside, they were greeted with a banquet. It was expansive, stretching most of the hall and being tied together with a lavish dining table large enough to seat them all, and then some.
You shall never want with us, it seemed to say—it wasn’t wholly a lie, and Shalem believed them.
It took years for him to realize the unease growing inside him was born from his want. Selfishly, he wanted. He wanted and wanted, for even more than what was given to him. The world was at his fingertips. There couldn’t be many more fortunate than him, and yet he still desired a life where he didn’t have to repay his debts, a life where he could simply live.
He doesn’t see the people he killed as selfish for wanting to live, and yet here he is, finding himself a victim to the same desire and cursing himself for it.
“Your mind seems elsewhere,” Phantom murmurs, somewhere near Shalem’s ear. Phantom is always a step closer than he remembers him being. Shalem takes care not to jump.
“I was…” Shalem considers his words. “Reminiscing, some might say.”
“Some might,” Phantom repeats. “Is that how you would define it?”
Phantom is like a shadow gained sentience among the rest of the party goers, a void of light that urges a halo of distance in a place with otherwise close quarters. Shalem is the only one breaching that shockingly delicate barrier. It’s not as terrifying as he once thought it would be.
He’s not quite sure how much consideration Phantom puts behind his words, whether or not this is a question he’d be naturally inclined to ask anyone who wasn’t Shalem, but Shalem weighs his answer all the same.
He doesn’t have to masquerade as someone else in front of Phantom.
“…No,” he says hesitantly, the word heavy and awkward in his mouth. He stares down at the hors d’oeuvres; a deviled egg smushed by someone’s thumb, with a fingerprint in the middle of the mayo and yolk blend. Suddenly, he finds the spread grossly unappetizing. “Describing it as reminiscing might imply some sort of fondness, of which I have none.”
Phantom hums, gaze drifting from Shalem’s face down to the table cloth. It’s white laced with gold accents; far too sprightly to be evocative of the Troupe.
“Yet their memory is inescapable,” Phantom says as he studies it. “Whether you hate or fear them, inevitably… you will dream of them, even in your waking moments.”
Shalem gives Phantom a faint smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. It isn’t forced, which makes it all the more odd.
“I imagine you’re in a very similar situation to mine, Mr. Phantom.”
Phantom nods curtly. “And I as well. I trust you’re the only one who can understand the depths of my feelings towards them; the betrayal, the disgust, the hatred… you’ve felt it all. Surely, you can understand my desire to eradicate them and free the world of their visage.”
Shalem can. He can feel it even in the deepest parts of his mind, a bone deep ache that comes in waves but never fully abates.
Just a little over a month ago, he wouldn’t have described it the way Phantom had—as a feeling like betrayal, disgust, or even hatred—it was simply fear, primal and undiluted. That’s still how he feels, he knows, but now there’s something different lurking under the surface, something coiled and waiting to spring out. It’s dark and murky and, perhaps most of all, angry.
Something incredibly foreign.
“…I do,” Shalem says faintly, beneath the muddled conversations to either of their sides, amid the slow pull of the orchestra picking back up around them. “All too well.”
“I thought I had dealt with them,” Phantom says somberly, eyes still fixed on the table cloth. “I thought I ended their lives, and with their end, the stories they tried to tell. I tried to remain steadfast in that belief, even as their ghosts clung to me without release. It was foolish.” Phantom’s eyes meet Shalem’s, a soft brown that he finds far more piercing than he really ought to. “I fear that if I was wrong once, I will be wrong again.”
That’s where the difference between the two of them lies, Shalem surmises. Phantom has courage, hope, an unflappable will that’s not so easily dissuaded by things like fear and anxiety. There’s a finite end to his fight with the Troupe, and while there may be hardships, and he is fully aware of the possibility that he’ll come out of it in a casket, there will be a closing chapter.
He may be battered and haunted by things unfathomable to his peers at Rhodes Island, but there is an end.
Shalem is not as audacious, nor as lucky, to have ever been able to believe in such a concept.
He’s not quite sure if it’s a naive fear on his part, or if Phantom is the one who’s naive for believing he can squash out something as invasive and all consuming as the Crimson Troupe; they’re theater’s equivalent of a cockroach, feasting off grime and carcasses and dubbing it art.
Something Shalem had come to know from his time with them is that they are not the type to go out quietly, with a whimper. They’re the type to make a show of their demise, to parry a dance around your knife before it meets its home in their chest, plunged to the hilt. They’d let you believe you’ve bested them, up until the point you realize the uncanniness of their screaming sounds much more like singing, and that the blood on your hands is only smeared makeup. That is when you’ll find the cemetery you meant to put them to rest at was a stage, and that you’ve followed their script to a T with raucous applause.
It’s highly unlikely Phantom would ever call himself an optimist, but he’s far closer to the word than Shalem could ever be. That would take a certain kind of courage he has never been able to grasp for himself, and ultimately, he is defined by his selfish cowardice.
“I had thought of it as something like a childish fear of mine, to think that they would come back even now,” Shalem confesses quietly. Speaking of the Crimson Troupe so openly—even if in hushed voices—feels like a sin, as if simply uttering their name aloud could cause them to materialize in the crowd. It’s something he could see the Troupe’s butler chiding him for. “Truthfully, though… I don’t think their story is over. I never have. I feel as if we’ll always be falling into their schemes, even after they’ve all been buried.”
“Then give me your aid,” Phantom says suddenly, with a bizarre amount of intensity, “and with it, let me grant you some peace of mind.”
Phantom leans into the little bubble Shalem has sectioned off for himself. Phantom’s bangs fall forward as he draws closer, hanging somewhere near Shalem’s nose. Shalem isn’t quite sure where exactly, because his eyes are far too fixated on Phantom’s to check. It’s an odd concoction of fear and something more intimate keeping them held together.
Shalem is too stricken put a name to it.
For a small, irrational moment, he expects Phantom to reach down and grab his hands, to lace their fingers together and pull him closer—but Phantom doesn’t do that, because of course he wouldn’t. He’s never been a touchy person, even when they were children and their troubles were few and far between. He always keeps a modest distance between himself and others, despite that space shrinking around Shalem.
“My memories are hazy,” Phantom continues, something profoundly honest and vulnerable in his hushed voice. “I hadn’t been sure of why I found myself at Rhodes Island in the beginning. The only thing I could recall was that I needed something—someone—that I had pursued to this hulking landship. I hadn’t realized it was you I had been seeking until I saw you at the castle, when you’d pulled me from the depths of my own mind and brought me back to shore.”
Shalem swallows, taking a small step back and away, if only for a breath of air not so close to Phantom’s lips.
He’d figured his presence was much of the reason Phantom had allied himself with Rhodes Island, because surely coincidence alone couldn’t have led them back together. It wasn’t fate, nor the Troupe—they’d rather forget Shalem as a blemish on their otherwise unsullied history of pupils, and he can’t imagine they see Rhodes Island as anything more than a nuisance they’re not keen on entering the sights of.
It’s still… odd, to hear it in words. Phantom searching for him unearths the unpleasant implication that Shalem is something more. Something potentially important, no matter how arbitrarily. Even if he was only sought out for a warm, expendable body that Phantom wouldn’t have to coerce to his side, there’s still a part in him that finds that little implication more terrifying than the Crimson Troupe itself.
Shalem knows the Troupe.
He does not know this feeling.
He does not know the feeling of want, of amity, of camaraderie. He has never been needed—not in any of the kinder senses of the word.
As he had stepped into the threshold of the Troupe’s home, he had reckoned with the fact that that would not be the end of his bout with them. The possibility that they would forget about him—even before he set himself firmly back into their sights, hand delivered on their doorstep—was slim to none. They operate in a world based upon secrets, and Shalem holds the key to many of them. Should he choose (and if he were foolish enough to do so), he could let them loose, scatter them into the wind and let them land in the hands of whoever they please.
He’s a loose end that won’t be let go as readily as he’d once hoped. Living without their influence was nothing more than a pipe dream—there’s never been any use in trying to outrun his past.
When he had pulled Phantom’s warm body against his own, hoisted his limp arm over his shoulders and hauled him back into safety, he had quietly accepted that this would be his fate. If it’s not the Crimson Troupe he’s bound to, then surely it’s their Blood Diamond, and he’ll accept that with all it entails.
“I would be happy to help you in any way I can,” Shalem says. The words feel raw against his throat as he fishes them out. They’re nothing short of the truth, but they taste the same as a lie; slick and acidic.
He can see something in Phantom’s eyes; something locking itself away with a degree of care Shalem isn’t entirely comfortable with.
“Any help you would be willing to lend would be deeply appreciated,” Phantom says, almost diplomatically, “but you needn’t force yourself. The sins I’ve committed at their behest are mine alone to bear.”
“Do you think I’m innocent, then? That I’ve never sinned for them?” Shalem asks abruptly, in a way that even surprises him. His voice is sharper than he should ever allow it to be, too forceful and quick. “I’m not free of guilt. I’m not a good person—I could never be one. And if, somehow, I could atone, I would still be tied to them because of my debts.” And I still abandoned them. “They’re as much my past as they are yours.”
Phantom blinks at him, something dying on the tip of his tongue as he soundlessly closes his mouth.
Shalem blinks back as his words catch up to his ears. He bites down on his lip to keep anything worse from spilling out. God, he should just fill his mouth with lead and hope it drowns him.
“I’m sorry, I’m—“ he starts, a floundering attempt at an amendment, one he doesn’t know how to finish.
He only knows he doesn’t want to drive Phantom away.
For as much as he fears Phantom and the past his presence dredges back up, Phantom carries with him a sense of belonging and fulfillment that Shalem has never come close to feeling before—not even at Rhodes Island, where things like praise and thanks are often doled out.
“I’m afraid,” Shalem timidly admits, spitting out the words before they get caught in his throat again. So soul crushingly afraid that he spent months hiding in his room, terrified that it wouldn’t be Lucian he’d come to face-to-face with if he stepped outside, but instead an amalgamation of the Crimson Troupe’s ill will wearing his skin. “I want nothing more than to be free of them. I want to rid the world of them myself, just as much as I’d rather pluck my own eyes out than see them again. I—“
I want so many things, he finishes from the safety of his mind. So many things that I can never have and will never deserve. I want to take and take from them, take what they took from me, so that I may never want again. I want to pay my dues and thank them for allowing me to continue my miserable existence. I want to know who I am, but they killed the parts of me that knew the answer. I want—
“I, too, am afraid,” Phantom says, eyes cast down and to the side, serving to disguise the hints of muddled—awkwardness? “I can’t imagine it’s possible not to be; to not feel the icy grip of fear with every step you take onwards, towards the fate they’ve crafted for you. To be able to continue on without that fear… it’s an impossibly foreign thought. Just as impossible as it would be to live a life fully content while remaining sedentary—free in the conventional sense, perhaps, yet still forced to don a cloak of shadows in an effort to remain unseen. Correct me if I’m wrong, but…” his eyes flit to Shalem’s, still far too piercing, even with the small dose of hesitation they now hold, “you wouldn’t be able to live like that either, would you?”
It’s been ages since he spoke to Lucian so closely, confident in the lack of prying eyes and ears; and still, Phantom manages to pick up so near to where they left off as children, before they were so closely acquainted with death. It’s as if he can still clearly see the way into Shalem’s heart, like there isn’t now a firm caking of blood and dirt all the way down.
It makes his heart flutter.
He might throw up.
Please throw away the keys to my heart, Shalem thinks helplessly, desperately, terrified. He doesn’t know how Lucian still holds them, even after all these years, but— Don’t want me. Don’t crave me. Because I’ll follow you, hesitate, and wind up being your ruin.
I can’t stomach being the one to snuff you out.
They weren’t particularly close as children—circumstance never allowed it after joining the Troupe, and Lucian had been a year or two older than Shalem. That, apparently, had been enough to kill any sort of interest either of their parents had in setting up time for the two to meet. That had been fine with Shalem. He’d always been quiet, content with just the presence of his parents and his own mind.
Then, their village was submerged in a flood. He and Lucian were taken into their custody, just like many of their other neighbors.
As their numbers thinned in the Troupe’s care, the already meager pieces of evidence that he had lived a life before the Troupe—the tangible, verifiable kind of evidence; the type that couldn’t be easily brushed off as the musings of a lonely child, daydreams of a life he’d like to lead—began to dwindle.
Had he always been this reserved? Did he really enjoy nothing more than his parents’ company? He can’t remember the faces of any of his neighbors; was he always on the outskirts?
But there was still Lucian.
Lucian who took everything in stride, braving the limelight without an ounce of fear in his eyes. Lucian who had evidently remembered their shared past, because he sought out Shalem on more than one occasion. It was never for anything more than awkward small talk, but it was enough for Shalem to burn every curve of his face into the back of his mind. He memorized the slope of his nose; the tufts of fur on the tips of his ears; counted the beauty marks on his neck again and again; committed it all to memory because he couldn’t bear to forget anything else.
“No,” Shalem agrees. He allows a hesitantly weak smile to sweep over his face. “I’m afraid you’re right. I couldn’t live like that. I tried to, and I failed the moment I saw you were in need of me.”
He rolls his wrist to dispel some of the shakiness in his hands, pressing his fingers into his palm after it involuntarily flexes under the stress. This entire evening has felt like he’s been holding his breath without realizing it. It has him wishing for the drink he’d discarded with so little thought earlier. He’s never been a fan of how alcohol makes him feel, but it’d likely be better than this terribly raw feeling; it’s almost like nakedness, and he’s not keen on it.
Any sort of wanting geared towards him still doesn’t feel right, like he’s found himself in an alternate universe where everything is backwards and he’s something more than a blight; where he isn’t someone blundering and tripping his way into a life he doesn’t deserve and can never have; where he isn’t simply stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop, twiddling his thumbs and faking a smile.
But, perhaps, maybe he’d be willing to try for something grander. After all, he managed to make it this far on blind luck.
“How about one more dance?”