Chapter Text
It had started off as another sleepless night. While he had been placed in a room further away from the others, and thus was blessed with merciful quiet, the voices within him refused to give him the same mercy. As he paced around the room, sure to burn through the rug at this rate, his fingers twitched, longing to glide across ever familiar keys.
His eyes glanced at the clock. It was already eleven. The steady ticking reminded him of the metronome in the lounge, though realistically, the tone wasn’t the same—perhaps it was just his tired mind grasping for any excuse to stay up and out of bed. Still, each tick had him tapping his foot against the carpet, and soon, a song he had been longing to play for a while now surfaced.
He would be disturbing the other guests and servants if he went down to play the piano, he reasoned with himself. He was already partially done with getting ready for bed too, coat discarded and hair flowing freely past his shoulders. It would be a hassle for him to undo his work just on the off-chance that someone were to investigate his noise disturbance in the middle of the night. But then his hands twitched again, and this time he couldn’t help but give in to the siren’s song.
To hell what they think. With his mind clear and a goal in sight, he grabbed his coat and threw it on, not even bothering to button up, before he left his room, cane in hand, for the lounge.
The dark lounge bloomed with an orange hue as Frederick entered with a lantern in hand. He hummed faintly while shadows danced and weaved around the walls as he moved to set it down on the mantle. He took a step back, eyes darting back and forth between the lantern and the piano. Yes, he should still be able to play even with the dim light, and so he moved to take his usual place on the piano bench. First, he carefully opened the lid before he pulled his gloves off and set them aside.
He ran his fingers across the surface of the keys. He had already gone through this earlier, however he could not get enough of it. Faintly, he could feel a weight being lifted off of him. Perhaps it was Euterpe giving him her blessing, he mused. He pressed down on one key, allowing the note to ring out, echoing in the lounge before fading into nothing.
And then he began to play. It came to him as naturally as breathing, and as each note hit his ears, he allowed himself to get lost in the melody he played, the first one that came to mind—Chopin’s Nocturne in B major. The piece had a dreamy quality to it, notes repeating in varying degrees of tenderness, and it served its purpose in calming down the racket in his brain.
The notes rang out and faded to signal the end of the piece, and he allowed himself a few moments of rest as he pondered which piece to play next. That’s when he heard it—the faint creak of a latch being undone and the squeak of a door opening.
A door? The door in the lounge didn’t have a latch.
Alarmed, Frederick’s head whipped around, hand immediately going for his cane. Just as he suspected, the main door to the lounge wasn’t the source of the noise. His eyes scanned the rest of the room, and then he finally noticed that the carpet had been rumpled and askew the whole time, revealing a trapdoor—a trapdoor that was currently open. A trapdoor that was currently open and had a man’s head poking out of the opening.
In the dim light, Frederick saw the man—slightly tanned with curly, black hair and scarring around his left eye—blink in surprise upon seeing him. The two of them stared at each other for a few moments, neither daring to move an inch.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
And then the man started to cough, rather violently. He could see how his whole body shook from each convulsion, a ragged breath wheezing out of him until his fit calmed down.
“Fuck, so goddamn dusty down there,” the man mumbled, scrunching up his nose before he moved to climb out of the hidden opening.
Frederick’s grip tightened on his cane because for one thing, he was sure there were only three other people invited to the manor. The butler had mentioned that upon his arrival.
He guessed he was gaping like a fish because the man took one look at him after he closed the trap door, and said almost sheepishly, “You’re not supposed to see me, mister, if he knew you saw me, he’d have my head.”
The man dusted off his clothes, and nudged the rug back into place, concealing the trapdoor once more. Frederick was sure he’d be the one coughing next. Good lord, that basement was dusty.
“Let’s just pretend you didn’t see me, and I’ll be on my way, yeah?” the man said with a wry attempt at a smile.
Frederick blinked, and he’s about to ask just who the hell he was, but the man was already on his way out of the lounge. How rude.
He paused in the doorway. “You’re good on the piano,” he said simply before he left, ducking out of sight.
Frederick had chalked that interaction up to the fact that he had been tired. It was simply a hallucination, a product of his sleep-addled brain, that caused him to imagine a man emerging from a hidden trapdoor in the middle of the night. A man who he found no trace of in the morning, and trust him, he used what little energy he had into turning the manor upside down for him.
He must have looked extra perturbed that morning because the reporter—Alice, if he remembered her name correctly—had politely asked if he was okay during breakfast.
He waved her off with a shake of his head, but he didn’t miss the frown on the journalist’s face as he took a big sip from his glass of wine, either because she didn’t believe his shoddy dismissal or because she was judging him for drinking wine so early in the morning. He wasn’t sure.
Alice didn’t make any comments, however, and instead said slowly, like she was approaching a skittish deer, “I heard you playing the piano last night.”
He blinked a few times. Oh. He figured he would have woken someone up from his little excursion.
“I apologize,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I figured it must have been because I still had some pent up energy. Did I wake you up?”
Alice shook her head, a small smile taking over her previous frown.
“No, not at all. You’re a wonderful pianist after all,” she replied. With a blink, her gaze left Frederick, and she seemed rather fixated on the wall over Frederick’s shoulder.
“I couldn’t sleep at all last night, too,” she admitted. “Then I heard you play and I was out like a light—it was very faint, I don’t think anyone on the higher floors could have heard you.”
She added the last part hastily upon seeing something shift in Frederick’s expression. His exhaustion must have run even deeper if such minute feelings showed.
His shoulders dropped from their stiff poise, and he adjusted in his seat as he thought of a response.
“Still, I have to apologize for being a potential disturbance,” he said, gloved fingers tapping against the stem of his wine glass. His other hand drummed on the surface of the table, and a flash of inspiration on what to play next came to mind. He cleared his throat, admitting in a soft voice, “It might happen again.”
Alice smiled. “I’ll look forward to a good night’s rest then, Mr. Kreiburg.”
At the same time in a different part of the manor, Norton found himself spacing out as Orpheus chewed him out.
“I just don’t understand how you weren’t able to prepare any of the dosages,” Orpheus said, brows furrowed and lips pressed into a fine line.
“I’m not a chemist,” Norton drawled, “and it’s dark down there. How am I supposed to know if I’m following your instructions correctly?”
In a way, his words held a bit of truth. That basement had one measly light bulb to work with, and he had found himself straining to see the vials in the cabinet. Maybe if he had spent a bit more time, he could have finished up on preparing the drugs, but the lackluster lighting conditions combined with just how goddamn dusty it was made him call it quits the second Kreiburg finished playing.
Speaking of, he did not get distracted in the middle of preparing the drugs because Kreiburg started playing. No, he did not. He absolutely did not stop in his tracks just to listen to him play, no, and he most certainly was not going to mention this to Orpheus.
“Maybe invest in better lighting and I’ll get the job done faster,” he said. “For a rich baron, that basement has worse lighting than the mines. Oh, and dustier too.”
He barely held back a laugh when Orpheus hissed at him.
“What am I paying you for? Clean it up then if it bothers you so much,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I’m assuming you’ll add more lights then?”
He was just barely able to dodge the candle Orpheus threw at his head.