Snapshots: Part 1 - The Monsters Waltz

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Hey Look Im Not Dead *Insert Obligatory Joke Here* Why Am I Still Awake

Snapshots: Part 1 - The Monsters Waltz

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Tairais

Tairais

@Amuulzhaan 2 years ago

(( So. I kind of just dropped off the face of the earth for a few weeks, Its fine, I'm just kind of useless XD which was largely due to school just kind of. Sucking away the tiny bit of creativity and will to live I had! But I'm back until exams start to kill me ^^'

So for anyone that cares to remember the comic thing I was doing for that one story arc of Richard/Elias/Artemis's, I've basically given up on doing weekly 4 panel things because again: no motivation/creativity, and very, VERY little time. So we're going back to what I do best and writing pages of prosey bullcrap a la Richard style and putting just one or two of the four panels I had in mind for each week... In a very sketchy, more watercolor-like style.

Hopefully I don't disappoint anyone too too terribly :D

(Also, never mind the fact this story was supposed to be done kind of.. March-ish. Woops. I'm terrible, I know.)

That being said, if you have any questions, see a spelling/grammatical error, want a summary/refresher of my dumb story, or want Charricthran to deliver letters, just @ me and I'll (hopefully) get around to it before the thread closes ^^"

With that, let's jump back into this lovely world of ours with what was supposed to be weeks 4 and 5! ))

Snapshots of Week 4: I Mostri.

On that wretched spring day, raindrops fell like discarded bullets, landing with soft pings and tinks as the storm slowly got underway.

It was one of his favorite analogies for the weather, made even more usable by the fact it was true at the time: When bullets were used, discarded as such, there was always a body that fell with them, and in his case there were several bodies, all of which looked like one of the Castellanos brothers. All of which were twisted into a display of art that mocked him for his betrayal.

The thought gnawed at him, chewed at his brain like a parasitic worm and tried to drag up the ghosts of his conscience that he had been drowning since Elias' rescue from that decaying warehouse. He sighed softly, then smiled at the peace of mind that followed as he cast a watchful gaze over the crowd of people hurriedly moving across bridges to get out of the weather.

What had happened to that analytical view of his fellow man? What had changed him so utterly that he had gotten lost in his own mind- lost in perceptions not quite his, moralities and alliances and obligations not quite his? Since when had he cared for Society (not The Society but Society as a whole) and the pigs that made up its majority? The rude, the crass, the vulgar. Those who detracted from life's inherently beautiful and glorious discordant harmony- since when had he cared what they thought?

Before drunken confessions and freckles like scattered stars, he supposed it was after his failed betrayal. Fear and worry, which at the time had been foreign concepts in an empty heart, had been planted and grown in order to keep himself safe and away from a more certain death than he would have found at Elise's hands.

After Elias (it was always 'before' and 'after' regarding him, and what a curious thought that was), it was the worry of trying to keep both him and Artemis safe and his true self hidden, which was an urge he hadn't felt since Benediktas and a handful of memories locked in rooms of the cathedral he dared not visit.

As they could all now see, that had worked out wonderfully.

Each raindrop that lashed into his face felt like a thousand needles, tearing him from his thoughts. They pierced the canals of Venice and crashed against all her beautiful buildings like muted applause for Hannibal and Will's artistry and the body they left, suspended underwater like a siren.

They were his ultimatum, painted in the faint gold of muffled candlelight. They were memories, bathed in the laughter of celebrations several streets over. They were almost an apology, whispering in time with the push and pull of his oar as he maneuvered his borrowed gondola through the reflections of Venice.

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He didn't dare look at his own reflection. He knew what he'd see.

He’d see that pathetic shivering mess that had first lodged in the Society, sweating through the night, burning from the inside out, wandering through a fog of death.

Richard saw him, and he hated him.

He’d see that ignorant, raging beast in a cage, impudent and wrathful. That doomed seducer, false and frail, infinitely bloodless and culpable. The Patchwork Prince, without the refinement of his mentors, the thing that had taunted Lewis and torn one of a handful of blossoming friendships to shreds.

Richard saw him, and despised him.

He’d see that righteous and two-faced leech who crossed the ocean and sat before Botticelli, a mentor on either side, smiling gormlessly and feeling the dull weight of a killing knife in his pocket.

Richard saw him, and wanted to kill him.

“I am none of you now.” Richard whispered to the dead air.

If not them, however, then who was he?

He took a deep breath in and felt the cold damp air flash through his lungs. He held it until his lungs began to burn with borrowed fire, then poured it out again. He looked down into murky green-gray waters.

He saw a man broken and distant- a hollow shell on uncertain feet held upright by nothing more than misguided determination.

He saw gaunt eyes with the hands and hearts of the dead clinging to their depths.

“What do you want, Richard?” The question came like a match struck in the darkness, thrown down an empty well. Hannibal's voice licked into his ear like a tongue, and he shivered. He saw the Wendigo perched in his reflection.

Richard let out another shuddering breath. He pulled into an canal bordered by buildings long since long to flooding, standing against the sky like rotting teeth.

"Answers." He hissed and leaned his body against a crumbling brick wall.

"Why"? A ghost of a breeze across his neck carried Will's voice this time, and the Stag was behind him, breathing carrion into the mist and thudding rain.

“Because you left me for dead AND DID NOT LET ME STAY THAT WAY!" His whisper turned into a howl, and with both hands, Richard tore a hole in the wall behind him, bricks roaring and plaster screaming as it collided with an old dock before sinking into the water.

His hands clenched and unclenched, rain pouring off him in rivulets, and still, he felt nothing except unease curling and coiling like a snake ready to spit poison and bile into his stomach.

What had he said? ‘I do not wish to think of you. I am beyond you.'

And he didn’t. But oh.

Oh, how stupid he’d been, and Artemis and Elias were suffering for it. How stupid he'd been to think he could escape their influence, to untangle the cat's cradle of fate-strings that tied the three of them together.

How stupid he still was, to think he had been free when there wasn't a day that went by where the Stag or the Wendigo didn't prowl after him on hooves that clicked like breaking bones.

He fell asleep then, heedless of the roaring wind, heedless of his shivering body, tinged blue and purple as his drenched body tried to recover lost warmth and his mind wandered back to an empty January in retaliation. His hoarse shouts would spark rumors of a haunted canal for weeks to come.

Elsewhere in the world, practiced hands seared parts of a pair of lungs long cut out of their former residence. A basin full of water and liquefied rubies sparkled nearby and laughed in the glow of the flames.

Later, three pairs of eyes- Blue and maroon calm and mutely amused, brown wearily terrified- would sit for dinner, a habit formed in more recent weeks in a facsimile of civility.

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Week 5: Il Valzer.

Another week, another country, two more chess moves later, and still the 'black' side of the board stayed still.

Perhaps it wasn't quite right to call his former mentors (and his almost-brother) as such- certainly his and Hannibal's body counts were likely nearby in their multitudes, and he was many years Hannibal's junior, not to mention the great many manipulations and lies and-

In short, perhaps they were simply two different shades of gray, rather than black and white. Either way, it was irrelevant. Their game was more like a waltz, really. Both sides had to give and take, had to lead and follow and react.

Charricthran carried letters to Lewis every couple of days for the first three weeks. It was usually a progress report along the lines of, "I found another body. It was in Elias' image this time," or, more often, "It looked like Artemis and I have all but ceased being shocked."

More often still, something along the lines of, "This will not end well- for any of us. I have little faith that any of us pawns will escape the wrath of two kings, if you will forgive my use of a well-overused metaphor."

Always be polite. He must always be polite.

He stopped contacting Lewis after the night in Venice.

He instructed Charricthran to stay and hide from Torke, showing a rare moment of sympathy to the damnable bird who had made his life hell. Then again, Torke had stripped him of all his feathers several times over, and it wouldn't do for his contact with the Society (among other things) to leave.

Torke's feat was a rather impossible task, given the bird was made of nothing more than blood and shadow. He'd done it five times anyways, and Charricthran nearly c-

Richard shook his head, stifling a cough as he pivoted on his heel.

Irrelevant. It would do no good for his thoughts to wander. There was another slaughtered body, he was now quite ill, and he was waltzing in Vienna, specifically in the Hofburg Palace's ballroom with his main source of information regarding Hannibal and Will:

Doctor Bedelia du Marier.

A force of nature in her own right, she hardly seemed to have aged in the five or so years since he saw her last. Timeless as a glacier, and just as cold and stony. She was similar to Hannibal in that regard only, otherwise as similar to him as a snake was a dragon.

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Now, there was a thought. A great red dragon, painted in the blood of slaughtered pigs, with a stag cloaked in the feathers of dead, preying ravens at his side-

Irrelevant. It would not help his case with Doctor du Marier if he voiced his own, needlessly poetic observations. She was much like a haunted suit of armor now, rusted with disuse and acrid fear. She would not open up easily.

And so, he smiled charmingly and spoke softly, and did not freeze and stiffen when she made the astute observation that he acted much like both Hannibal and Will, and that neither of those person-suits fit him well.

She wasn't wrong. All of Will's imagination and ability to empathize with none of the disorder, all of Hannibal's lack thereof, more the same in their pathology. Clinical detachedness, an outsider looking in- all the better for manipulating people like the gears in a clockwork machine. That, he knew plenty of. Nothing wrong with him except a unique past and a unique way of living and thinking, and she told him as much.

Her statement left him with the feeling of being gutted, stripped raw and bare. He had accepted that he had a particular darkness seen and shared by very few in the world, and had accepted the manipulations and machinations that had come with it, but wasn't there something more? Shouldn't there have been? He had been a good, kindly soul once.

Until he hadn't, and he had hidden the fact and that.. really hadn't worked out in his favor. Hiding never did any good. He had far too much data to back that particular hypothesis up.

Bleeding brothers, lost limbs, lost pride, forgotten identities, shattered homes, shattered hearts. The list went on and on.

When he and Bedelia parted ways, he ducked into the corner of the ballroom where the grand piano and bar lay, watching couples waltz and twirl about. The scene reminded him of better times. If not better, then simpler, for he would have rather taken attending the Ambassador's ball with his father, mother, brother- family, than.. whatever this constant state of drowning in tar was.

Elsewhere, two sets of adoring eyes met over a dinner table while their guest curled inwards on himself on the bed of his lavish prison cell. His muted whimpers were heard by none but the ghosts of his past.

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