Extra: Lacrimosa
A/N: This is my comfort, this is my solace. This tastes like home and smells of dust and all the damned noisy things that make me crave what I always wanted - to belong. It might be OOC for Nagant and Browning, but that’s what I love about this piece-it’s the type of moment I want them to have.
(Edit October 2011 - this is still my favorite 'extra'.)
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In a busy world where the world itself seems to be wearing running shoes, any solace is welcome. For children, it is their homes, for adults it is the land of sleep, where there is no one to impress, no one to fear and nothing to do.
For Elizabeth Browning, it was the music room inside Rosenrot Academy. The room was as she remembered; from the gentle spacing of each instrument to the smell of musty wood, dust motes gently sparkling in the early morning.
“Hey there,” she said to the room, her footsteps light as the figure in her cat-eared jacket wandered towards a black piano. “it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
Quiet was the only thing she ever looked forward to, now. Her fingers interlocked, tossed and tumbled on top of each other as music flooded the room with light.
It was the only time when she ceased to be Elizabeth and became someone greater, in her imagination. Her eyes were closed and the music became fast-paced, desperate, searching for an end that would never come.
I want it all to stop.
Why did I wake up so early?
Adrian Nagant crunched the last bite of honeyed toast, burnt taste cloying on his tongue. The silence was pleasant compared to the noise, the bustle and hustle of the concrete city. His feet fell to and fro as he wandered the empty classrooms, imagining the sounds of people dirtying up the place. He loosened his tie and placed his hands in the pockets of his uniform jeans, his feet not making a sound.
He heard the music before he ran to it.
It was loud and quick and fast and full of want and it charged, raped him with its’ very honesty and need. His hands slid open the door and he saw her-but wasn’t irritated, wasn’t annoyed. Her face was hidden; the cat-ears were the most defining feature of her.
To him, she was nothing more than a faceless being hidden underneath a white hood, the ears perking up and smiling, winking in a maniacal Cheshire kind of way. Elizabeth looked up and soft, pastel-wine red locked with harsh, army green.
And stayed locked, for what seemed like decades. The fingers playing the music kept on playing, as if by continuing to plink and plunder the notes from the ivory keys the spell of time would be repelled; the two of them would stay underneath that musical barrier for as long as they could.
“I…”
“No.” her throat was dry and she sounded hoarse, but clear. He could barely breathe and she could barely speak but they were complete.
He cautiously, carefully (as if she were a panther that would bite if he came too close) put one foot forward. She trembled but did not run, her fingers switched to another kind of music, more silent and inviting.
Welcoming, almost, and unlike her.
Adrian wondered if she had a twin he had never heard of. She merely looked back down, let the dark curtains of her eyelashes touch her raw-milk skin and played.
He sat down on the piano, and they never exchanged a word, a glance, a meaning, but they were whole.
"How long?" She opened her eyes and looked at him--she never knew his green eyes, his foxfur hair--was so tired. Everything about him was tired, and sad, and angry and confused--but composed and collected.
"I've been playing for as long as I remember." but the tone of her voice wasn't playful or annoying, it was just a voice, a parallel line that seemed to run with his voice and know that they would never touch or see or -be-, but that was just fine, because these lines ran together.
He wondered why he had looked at her and seen only annoyance when he could see that she was so sad and tired amidst her fake-real happiness. He idly thought that he had taken one pill too many--that this was a new addition in his sadistic Godfather's pleasure, the mixture of fantasy and reality.
Elizabeth Browning was an annoyance, a creature so despicably annoying that it would be a blessing to get rid of her forever, if it weren't for the order that civilians should never be hurt. But like the day he carried her to the clinic, she looked small and vulnerable and innocent.
Adrian Nagant was attractive. Elizabeth knew this. But not in the way the normal girls would predict. His hands were work-worn and calloused, his face tired and eyebags had hidden away wrinkles and deepened in color to match his morose mood.
She suspected that his smiles were rarely used and would look better than the unreal ones she saw tacked onto a girl's notebook one day in Homeroom.
She chuckled and sighed; the late-night research Noahn was having her do was messing with her head. Nagant was a friend, a fellow officer, her superior, someone she had no business knowing more than what he was willing to show. She couldn't help it. She was a woman, after all.
Instead, venting her frustrations out to the world, she formed musical notes and touched the keys, the keys crying out what she couldn't.
He heard her chuckle and shivered. It was dark and unlike her.
She must have a twin.
He stayed there, seated, swinging his legs back and forth limply, a rag doll forced to move.
There they were until the bell rang. And rang again. And three times it rung.
She broke the spell first, getting up and closing the darkness over the piano keys. He looked at her, hypnotized. She was small but he could feel it -- her control. She controlled the situation; he was just going to watch until she left.
"I'll see you later, then, Sir Nagant." she didn't smile and walked on, the cat-eared hood defining her, protecting her.
"Yeah."
Another day of lies had begun.