Bright Cities (Xigbar/Demyx, #04)
Title: Bright Cities
Author: maladaptive
Claim: Xigbar/Demyx
Prompt: 04 - create
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine
Demyx wonders if he's missed. Maybe they still look for him, maybe his family still leaves the light on in hopes that he'll come home. He knows that they've probably written him off as a loss by now. His family has always been sensible, taking calculated risks and cutting their losses quickly before risking their fortune. It was always money, profits, and even the things that weren't money were treated like money. Even sons. His fiancee, too, had a good head for sums and figures, and if his parents didn't approve of her as a woman they approved of her uncommonly good sense.
He'd been the emotional one surrounded by sensible people. They couldn't miss him any more than he missed them, and he couldn't miss them at all.
The only thing he really misses is music. The World That Never Was is quiet-- too dead for a city that's even brighter than Lucknow at night. Empty, but brighter.
It isn't a weapon that appears in his hand, like for everyone else. He would have been worried if that train of thought was what finally conjured up a weapon. It feels weird to pull his gloves off, like he's peeling away a layer of skin and leaving his nerves bare to the chill that permeates Never Was. The sitar is warm, warm like a patient lover, and he traces his fingers over the strings to hear them hum. Nineteen strings, just like he remembers. Even if the instrument doesn't look anything like his old one, it'll do.
He wonders if it's the first time the city heard music. The sitar plays just like he thinks it should-- without tuning, without his needing time to familiarize himself with the new instrument. It's like the sitar was made just for him.
Well. Of course it was.
Demyx imagines the notes winding their way down the streets, filling them up like a river swelling between the spires of concrete, glass, and neon. The notes grow more complex, and the river becomes a flood. A torrent of music, a monsoon crashing down. Music that his family found a silly indulgence, and his fiancee found an endearing obsession.
He wonders what the city thinks.