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Hecate's giant hands envelope around a frail figure so delicately, as if it's afraid it's going to break the frame of its master laying down on its palm: a conductor who is staring at the empty sky, lycoris baton in hand. She swings the baton to the chaotic melody in her head, trying to soothe it down to a calming symphony. Her head lolls off the edge of Hecate's fingertip as she moves it side to side following the tunes. Before the creature could reach and stabilize her head back to where it belongs, a figure appears and easily lends his shoulder for Phrolova to rest her head on.
The playwright lets the conductor lay her head on him in silence, the only melody playing being the slow rhythm of the baton being swung, swooshing sounds so loud in a domain so silent and empty, bereft of any other sounds but the wind.
But he's sure Phrolova is hearing differently.
What a beautiful place to end it all, Cristoforo thinks. Tinted with various shades of purple, from the cloudless sky to the flowers swaying gently, yet so devoid of life that everything looks monochromatic, like it’s been put through a film filter—a fake scenery; liminal, even. A place that looks like it should be brimming with life, the way Phrolova fought to her death for this place and its occupants to live, and yet…
Her soft whisper pulls him back.
“There shouldn't be betrayal where there is, if one does not have trust in the other in the first place, but unfortunately this is where we lay, wouldn't you say?”
“I would argue otherwise.”
“The Fractsidus’ goal and mine, the parallel was soon to cease, and as we see, I got what I wanted in the end.”
“And yet there hangs a question.”
“Wouldn't you have saved me, were I not close to my end goal?”
Cristoforo has his book open, but his eyes gaze on a spot on the ground just a little behind it, unfocused.
“If I were in your position, would you?”
“No.”
“Then you have your answer.”
He feels her head swing a little on his shoulder, her cold gaze at him for a while, but he doesn't look at her. That dead grey eye where its red has seeped out like blood, like blood just like her other eye hidden underneath all the bandages that cover her beautiful face.
Phrolova finally looks away, but she merely makes herself more comfortable at her spot. She waits for him to say something else, something more.
And so he does. “And who am I to take you away from your happy ending?”
“That does not align with that taste of yours that I know.”
“Of the beauty in tragedy, the tragedy in beauty, the resilience of human desires, the lengths one would take just to get what they wish for the most, the pain in their journey and the melancholic bliss of a bittersweet victory? My dear Phrolova, you've given me all I've longed for and more. I simply can never intervene with such a storyline.”
“I am not a character in your script, dear Cristoforo.” Her reply has a slightly edged tone to it as she returns the term back to him.
“And I am not your playwright, nor am I someone you would trust to be.”
His book is merely a prop, just something for him to hold as he takes in the scenery before him; a place Phrolova calls home. The vision of calm warmth with a tinge of unsettling coldness, an air of finality, he thinks it's very fitting for the Afterlife flowers to bloom here. It’s a very calming place to stay in eternally after such a tragic script.
“Would you have wanted me to save you?”
This time it's the conductor's turn to reply with silence. Her baton stills in the air, and now she merely swings it without direction—the symphony in her head ending with only the sounds of their breaths in the air, and of course, the wind.
“If only by letting you die, could you stay in this dream of yours, then I wouldn't change a thing. However, for as long as we've been colleagues, I'm sure I could've heard out a personal request or two. As I have done before for you in other times, unless you do not count those moments as me being trustworthy for you.”
“We were merely using each other to meet our own goals, were we not? I do not trust you as much as you do not trust me.”
“Dear, I trust you as much as you trust me.”
Simply, what is trust, in a group of untrusting people? There will never be a betrayal of trust if one does not trust the other. No matter how long they've stood next to each other, no matter how much they've ended up getting to know the other, their tastes, their desires, their fears. The one thing they would betray the others for. The one thing they chase the most.
That one thing that will simply outweigh whatever bond they've made, no matter how hard they tried to avoid it.
Won't it?
A hand softly touches the side of his face. Phrolova looks at him again with those eyes, her bandages let down, fluttering in the wind. Those sad eyes drowning in oceans of tragedy, such beautiful angst he can't look away from. He reaches up to meet her hand, just like all the other times he's offered her his hand; from simply helping her up when she needed it, gentleman as he is, to keeping her steady when she was wounded, to handing her his book of script back in Septimont—
A willingness to meet halfway.
“You wouldn't want me to wake you up from this dream of yours.” His fingers tap hers.
“No.” Her hand stays still.
“Then I have made the right choice in not saving you.”
“This isn't a dream for me, dear.” The term has lost its edge from earlier, a more relaxed tone replacing it, resigned.
“As you'd like.”
“Though you did not know how this story would end until you saw it happen.”
“The script is always laid bare for a playwright to see through, and as always, I do not wish to interfere with how a play ends.”
“So in the end, what matters the most is merely your own ideals.”
“Wouldn't it be the same for you too? I would consider this case closed, in that regard.” Cristoforo draws his hand back down, and Phrolova follows suit, a slow stroke of hand leaving his face.
“I see.”
They have the whole eternity to go in circles, but it seems like Phrolova isn't in the mood for it. Or she's content with Cristoforo's reply, but he doubts this will be the end of this particular discussion.
It is for the evening, though, as Phrolova finally sits up, letting Hecate slowly lower her down to the ground, standing next to him, as they often do as coworkers. Or perhaps now, simply as a conductor and a playwright side by side.
Phrolova has never been warm. Not in a literal sense, cold as a living corpse, nor figuratively, cool and detached as she always is towards him and Scar. The hand that grazes his own as she conjures her baton out of thin air is just as cool as it's always been, when they're hand in hand.
But as she starts conducting, a soft, bittersweet melody starts to play from somewhere within the Lost Beyond—a melancholic tune, so very sad and personal, yet warm at the same time; like a tune one would sing as one lays dying, or as one would sing as their dearly beloved, dearly departed leaves the world, a tune made to soothe in midst of sorrow, lulling one into a forever reverie like a lullaby.
A standing applause is in order when she finishes, and she replies with a curtsy and a smile, mirroring one that she did before her end.
“If I were to request an encore, would this be the moment for it?” Once again Cristoforo offers a hand, just like he's done time after time before, as her colleague, coworker, however you'd like to call it—he's fine settling without a title for now.
And as it always happens, Phrolova accepts his hand, cold meets cool, respect upon respect, a bond that was never wished for, never part of the plan, but happened nonetheless, outside of her control, outside of his making. An unexpected connection, fickle and thin as it is, but it exists despite all odds.
“As you'd like.”
The symphony that only exists in her head, the dullness of the scenery through his eyes, everything falls into nothingness in the Lost Beyond; but as long as her melody plays, as long as his script allows, as long as her hand stays in his, the hair-thin string that connects the conductor to the playwright remains.