🎵 𝄞 🎸 𝄫 🎷🎶 🎻 (jukejoint) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-18 01:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, christine daae |
Who: Christine and Daniel
What: An audition that does not go particularly well
Where: One of the new rooms in Passages
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Non!
Once Samantha's sister had confirmed that it was, in fact, possible to utilize the new rooms in the hotel to meet with inhabitants from the other side of the door, Christine left Daniel a quick message on the journals: Come. You will need a key, and you can enter whatever room you choose. We need only the time and date to match, and a desire for it to work, or so I am told. Friday evening, 1 in the morning? The curtain has gone down by this point, and no one will notice if I slip away. Why it mattered, Christine did not know. If she embarked upon this path, if he found that her voice suited, then she would need to become accustomed to pointing and whispers. Now, as it was, she hid in the darkness of the Opera House, and she only had to face such unpleasantness occasionally, when she came into contact with the primadona or the managers. But this, meeting alone with a single man in a hotel room, this was the kind of thing that was already said of her, already expected of her, and yet it made her heart race in her chest like a child who intended to do something forbidden.
She dressed in a simple afternoon dress, though she knew from her time in Samantha's body that this would be considered excessive. But it was a simple thing for her, and though it was not dotted and frayed as the grey afternoon dress that she wore to work was, it certainly bared no skin, and it was not particularly pretty. She felt mature in it, much older than a woman not yet out of her teenage years, and she stood among the flowers that had been coming every day for a week and twisted her long, brown hair up into an updo that was, perhaps, prettier than the dress called for. After much deliberation, she went with the most minimal of bustles, reminding herself that she had worn much less during her short time in Montmartre. Her looking glass told her that she looked passable, sedate and calm, and she did not see the flush that kissed her cheeks or the inherent youth that nothing could hide on her bare face.
For a moment, she worried that the Ghost would see, that he was watching, as he had always done in her youth, and that he would object. But no. She had not heard from Erik since arriving here, since that evening in Montmartre when he had come for her. He was not here, or he would have made himself known before this moment. Perhaps she glanced around the room longingly, her gaze lighting on the flowers that she suspected were from Raoul, and perhaps she waited a moment longer than absolutely necessary, out of a desire to see if the Ghost would appear. But, in the end, no one stopped her when she pulled open the door to the wardrobe closet that served as her bedroom, and no one stopped her as she stepped into the darkened hotel room beyond.
The minutes ticked by, slower as each passed. Daniel appeared after at least ten of these small eternities, and with him he brought staggering immediacy. He came into the room rapidly, no warning, not a knock, barely even the sound of the knob turning before he separated from the darkness and stepped forward. It was like watching a corpse travel backward through time, a bleak moving figure that assembled itself into a man of thoughts and expression as he looked around within.
He was a horribly unhealthy man. It was obvious he had never been tall nor large, but now he carried no great weight of muscle or girth, and his presence was contained entirely in the angle of his head and the depth of his eyes. The casual authority of his words and the aggressive charges of his chess pieces were missing from the haggard jawline and the battered sweep of his hair, and he looked like a mental patient because his arms were spattered with ragged, healing wounds from the creature behind his door. He brought with him no scent except for the bizarrely chemical hints of laundered cotton, and even though his thin shirt was wrinkled he had made a subtle effort to clean himself up for this meeting.
In one hand he carried a large paper bag. Vivid, bright blue eyes glittered from under the circles above his cheeks, and he stopped to observe her.
In contrast, she was perfectly put together. It was a symptom of her time, the fact that one was never imperfect in company. There was not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in the fine fabric that spoke to a time when money was plentiful. He would not know the afternoon dress was a season out of fashion, but it was. And despite the scandalous unconventionality of such a meeting, she still looked as if she belonged in a fine drawing room for afternoon tea.
She took him in with a gaze that was a warm hazel in skin that was, perhaps, a touch too dark for the current fashion. She was called a dark beauty, and there was a reason for it, with her dark hair completing the effect of being nothing like the pale women that were currently considered fashionable. But she did not know what he expected of her, what his knowledge of her led him to believe she would be, and she took him in instead. She knew of his drinking, of his decline, but she still expected a powerful man. Perhaps it was his manner of writing, his wit and the control of his words. But she had long since learned that the heart did not see through the eyes, and she no longer judged others as she once had.
"Am I as you expected, monsieur?" she asked in an English that was accented with a strange combination of things, a hint of the Swedish girl she had been along with the French woman she had become.
His expression didn’t change as he stared at her. The sharp intellect and easy bitterness with life was concentrated so deeply in the small space, the blue eyes seemed as if they had been recently shattered with it and reassembled badly, and glimmering shards caught the light as he moved his gaze from the top of her head down to her toes. When he spoke, his French was smoother and more accelerated than she was used to, the fluttery Parisian accent heavier in some consonants, and his voice was no more beautiful than he, but perhaps softer than a Frenchman might expect. “You, mademoiselle, are likely always unexpected wherever you present yourself.” It was impossible to tell if this was a compliment, and he turned away with his brown paper bag.
The furniture was dusty, but he ignored it as he chose an armchair to one side almost blindly, and he sat with the large bag between his feet. Nothing about him suggested the wealth that she was used to; a bare neck and cropped hair hinted more at the peasant, though the fine weave of his clothing denied it. Boneless and heavy with some invisible weight, he collapsed his spine backward into the overstuffed chair, pulling his elbows in to hide the wounds on his arm and looking again at her under hooded eyes. He kept looking her over, hem of her dress, curl of her hair.
"Am I to decide if this is compliment or insult, Daniel?" she asked, her voice soft and light and young, and his name an inadvertent caress in the French. She moved away from the center of the room, very obviously not looking at the completely inappropriate bed as she passed it by so closely that her full skirt brushed against the dusty bedspread. The room interested her only marginally in its dusty glory. She had spent time in Las Vegas, and she had already seen its wonders. The man in the chair was much more interesting to her, even though she knew nothing of the cut or make of his clothing. "Your posture is that of a rake, and all of my father's warnings about his sex are brought to mind. I believe you would sit like this even if you lived in my time." It was a blunt thing to say in her time, not at all virginal and young, nothing of the well-bred mademoiselle, and it warred with her intentional disregard of the bed. "Might I sit, or would you prefer we begin?" she asked with the deference one gave a Maestro and, after all, he was bringing the music, and this was his audition; it was only fitting.
Daniel’s eyebrows climbed as the words crept by. She sounded charmingly antique to his ear, and yet at the same time, astonishingly bold. Daniel had read his share of classic novels à la française, and he knew how a young lady should act. Not monsieur, but his given name. A blatant reference to the difference in gender. Of course, that she would present herself in a room alone with him was an act of a fallen woman, but Daniel was under the impression that such a thing could be hidden. No one in her world need know of a visit through a magic door, after all. It appeared that even in her own mind, Christine was lost to the world of good society. There was a long pause as he contemplated this.
“You may take my comment whichever way you please, mademoiselle,” he said. He did not use her name or return the familiarity, but neither did he correct his posture. “Sit,” he said. “I wish to hear more of you, to know your manner with people as opposed to the tone of your correspondence.” He made an imperious little gesture with his hand, and that was more wealth than anything else he had done, said, or seemed.
She noticed that he did not use her name, but she did not expect this of him. In all of their correspondence, she could only think of a few occasions when he had used her given name, and they had all been preceded by the appropriate honorific. She thought about that as he made the imperious gesture with his hand, and she caught the movement with her gaze halfway along its path. Gesturing was not the norm in her time, and it took her a moment to follow the instruction and sit.
She sat daintily in the chair, her weight largely on one hip, and her body angled toward his to accommodate the skirts and slight padding of the bustle. "I prefer to take comments in the way they are meant, lest I continually compliment myself as a result. The result would be dreadful," she quipped, and the quick wit was, perhaps, also not necessarily fitting with the youth displayed more clearly on her features now that she was so near him. There were signs of nervousness, however, in the crease of her gloved fingers against one arm of the chair, and in the pat, pat, pat of one pink shoe against the floor. "Do women here do as you say when you command them to sit?" she asked, the question hiding a hint or mirth, a hint of something else. "Or is that me learning your manner with people, as opposed to you learning mine?" There was a hint of a smile in everything she asked, as if there was a teasing secret he did not know behind each question.
She made a neat little figure draped on the chair, and Daniel had a curious surge of prideful possession, as if he had just acquired a rare edition for a collection he barely noticed. It was a strange feeling, but he didn’t overanalyze it. Instead he concentrated on his assessment of her. She had cleaned up, as he had, perhaps more, and she was showing an extraordinary amount of spine. It was one thing to banter over a chess game in a book, and another to speak to a man as if he was simply someone off the street. He didn’t like it or dislike it, it was simply a surprise. He had expected a mouse and gotten something different, and he hadn’t decided what to do with it just yet.
Daniel blinked very slowly, and there was something of the tired lion in the gaze, one that could not be troubled to move. The general aura of ill health disappeared when he wasn’t moving, to be replaced by one of lazy disinterest and willful decay. “I am as I am, and no different whether you be queen or fille de maison.” He did not imply that she was a working woman, but the spread of class could not be wider. “You find offense with my manner, I think,” he said, shifting slightly and again recovering a split-second of the sickroom, “That is not unusual.” Sam had been an exception, in her way, but Daniel did not point this out. “Do you speak to your former fiance in this way?”
She came from a time where ill-health was perhaps not as noticed as it should be and, in truth, it was an indication that her knowledge of men was not all she purported it to be, the fact that she did not notice the shift from ailing to healthy and back again. Too, her nerves, though admirably hidden (a trait learned on the stage), meant she had to concentrate on her banter, rather than on the nuanced things she might notice otherwise. Their conversations had led her to expect a wealthy lion, and she knew men like Raoul, men who were apt to grab the reins at the slightest opportunity. The role she played was not the demurring flower that Raoul and Erik had batted about at their whim, though there were cracks in the facade that she did not recognize, indications of the precocious young woman beneath the soubrette.
"You are as you are, but my reactions would differ, depending if I am queen or fille de maison, monsieur," she countered, and it was very much like chess, words instead of pieces and the dusty room the board. "I find no offense in honestly. So long as you do not try to seduce me, romance me, or control me, then you may say whatever you like to me, and I will not be offended." She smiled. "Though you will permit me the occasional gasp of shock, lest you think me improper," she teased, for there was nothing more improper than this. She sobered slightly, a crack in the facade showing. "Monsieur le Vicomte did not love me for my conversation."
Daniel enjoyed the opening gambit, but he was not the Beast, and though the creature healed rapidly, Daniel didn’t, and he couldn’t drink as heavily as he might have otherwise; he was tired, and she would thrash him just like she would if they had a board and pieces between them. His head tipped to lie sideways on his shoulder, the curve of his spine deepening. Dark lashes grew more defined against the careless curl of his hair against his forehead. He, too, smiled when she got to ‘seduce me’ and it was another lion’s smile, but this one had red in its teeth and the chase on its mind. Upright, mobile, hands moving and smile flashing, that would have been precisely what he intended. But not today. Not now. Perhaps not ever again.
“To his detriment, mademoiselle,” Daniel commented, turning negligently away from her again by tensing his fingers on the edge of the chair and drawing himself upward. He reached into the bag and pulled out a black box with metal screening, a portable speaker almost new and charged to its capacity. He had ordered it online by express after he found it was too much for him to actually go into a large store, a bleakly sobering realization that he solved by getting drunk afterward. “I have brought the accompaniment you require to the best of my ability.”
It said something, perhaps, that she did not recognize that smile for what it was. Raoul never looked at her thus and, even after Don Juan, Erik had never quite manage it either. It reminded her of the gazes of the men in the audience at Montmartre, but she had known none of them close up and in the light, not before Erik had talked her away and back to the safety of the Opera House. Her knowledge of men and women came from Samantha, and from Meg's whispers between the dormitory and wardrobe wall, and she was more at ease in the presence of a lion (even an ill one) than she would have otherwise been.
"I am not certain monsieur le Vicomte would agree," she replied, watching as he drew himself upward. She noticed then, now that she was close and had worked up the courage to look more carefully, the marks on his arm. His weakness she attributed to drink, but not the injuries. "You are hurt," she said rather obviously, the banter disappearing and facade slipping long enough for her to sit forward on the edge of her chair. Her gloved hand reached out, as if to touch, but she drew up short. The black box received a glance, and she looked at his face when he mentioned the accompaniment. "You cannot mean to hear me sing when you require assistance," she said, and she looked about the room as if she expected someone that she could summon, someone who would help, but those days were long since gone, and she had not cared for anyone who ailed since her father's illness when she was only a child.
Daniel did not want to be nursed, or he would have found a way to treat the Beast’s wounds himself. He knew, generally, that the Beast had fought off some of Ravenna’s creatures, things made of glass shards that he’d been unable to work free. It looked like he’d got the worst of them out (Daniel had vague understanding of aid from one corner or another) but there were still a few small chips the length of dimes and the width of needles. Daniel did very little moving and the wounds hurt, but he had no more success on his own than the Beast had, for the shards didn’t have substance on this side of the door. Now his arms looked as if he had rolled in glass, small healing wounds the ugly rust color of old blood. He pulled away from her when she reached for him, but not out of fear. He pulled a little portable music player from the bag next and refused to look at her. “I do not require assistance,” he retorted.
She raised a brow and she looked up at his face, away from the musical box that he pulled out of the bag. "You do not want assistance, monsieur. The two sentences have very different meanings, you must admit," she said, but her tone made it clear she would not try to push aid upon him. In some ways, try though she might, she was still a product of her time, and forcing him to do anything was not something she had yet considered as being feasible. "They are from your door?" she asked of the injuries, even as she stood and stepped closer. For a moment, it seemed she considered defying his movement in withdrawing his hand, but in the end she only touched the musical box with fingers that took on her own curiosity as they slid across the metal surface, even as he held it yet. "It is amazing, is it not, that an entire orchestra can be reduced to this?" she asked it in Swedish, unthinking in her amazement, and she remembered herself and repeated it in French a moment later. It sounded like a bittersweet awe, as if she was coming to terms with a world that had changed in ways that she did not necessarily consider better. The heavy fabric of her skirt brushed against the legs of his pants as she stood there, looking down at the marvel.
“I did not do it to myself, if that is what you were asking,” Daniel said, his mouth curled and his French losing much of that antique gravity he added simply for her benefit. The modern harshness was a push to make her drop the topic, and he bent his head to turn his attention to the music player, snorting at her assessment of it. “Reduced, it is a good term, mademoiselle. It is nothing like having the strings there for you. But it is some semblance, when you cannot go to them.” It was clear by the end he was not actually referring to her. He stretched out his mottled arm and delicately placed the player in the speaker. Nothing happened. Daniel frowned and prodded at it a few times; and without warning an explosion of sound burst forth, a full orchestral fanfare filling the room around them.
"I asked if the injuries were from your door. If I desired to know if you had done this to yourself, I would have asked the question differently," she assured him, wondering what he was trying for by changing his French. Language could not shock her any longer, not when she spent time in Samantha's mind. She stepped back as he lowered his head over the musical box, as if it was a requirement to give him room. She had never heard the sounds from the boxes, not with her own ears, and controlling Samantha was not the same as experiencing something herself, and so she had no immediate opinion of his disdain for the box. "You do not go to the Opera, monsieur?" she asked again, in his language, but no less antique for the switch. It was a sad question; she could not imagine life without the Opera; it was too ingrained in her soul.
The blast of sound from the musical box made her take two very quick steps back, as if an attack was commencing, and it took her a second longer to realize this was music. It sounded nothing like the rich, layered sounds of the orchestra. It did not even sound like her violin. After a moment, she recognized the notes of the aria that was playing, but it sounded oddly flat to her ears, and she tipped her head, every bit the refined young girl as she regarded him. "Does it always sound like this?"
Daniel winced too and pushed at another couple buttons, and some of the scream went out of the treble as he pulled the volume down a couple notches. After that he put a hand over the longest wound on the top of his forearm and drew it back into his lap to fold up in the armchair and contemplate the box. “There are larger and better speakers, and they sound a little better, but it is no Opera, mademoiselle. I have been many times, but no longer.” After a short pause, he added, “They are not easy to find in America.” This was not quite a blatant falsehood. He showed her the controls and told her to move back and forth between the songs or restart it.
She watched him cover the wound on his arm, her expression girlishly contemplative. She too had dealt with injuries that were not her own, but they had been well tended at their point of origin, and she had little to do but keep them clean until they healed. "There is medicine in your time for injuries such as yours, and something called stitches, though they do not resemble stitches at all," she informed him, though her expression indicated perfectly that she knew he was already aware of these things. Too, was she aware that there was nothing keeping him from the Opera, nothing but his own desire not to attend, though she kept this particular understanding to herself for the moment. Instead, she turned her attention to the controls, dropping into an elegant crouch that she somehow managed with the afternoon dress, an indication she had left off any under-corset in favor of being able to better sing. Once she had figured out how to find the aria she desired, Violetta's from La traviata, she paused the playback and stood. "You will begin it for me, monsieur?"
Daniel only narrowed his eyes at the implication he needed stitches. He didn’t. He didn’t want any stitches, no one sewing him, no one trying to fix him. Not in any way. And if she wanted this to happen, this financial patronage that wouldn’t end up with her in a very temporary bed, then he thought that she better damn well keep her hands away from him, too. He tried to put some of this into his gaze, but it only added fire that burnt some of the lazy disinterest away. “D’accord,” he said, begrudgingly, looking at the controls and, after a hesitation, reaching his arm out and over again.
She did not yet understand that fire could burn, and that could perhaps be blamed on Raoul and Erik and the respective pedestals they put her on, and her gaze only reflected interest and no concern when his own shifted. But when he agreed about the musical box, she stepped back, putting space between them for no reason other than an understanding of the poor acoustics in the room. It would not sound as it should, this aria, with this musical box and this space, but distance would improve it. She nodded, waited for him to press the button and begin the piece, and she closed her eyes as the music began.
No, it was no orchestra, and this was no stage. This was not even a space like the wooden halls of the Opera House where she would practice as a child, but after a few bars it did not matter. The beginning was tentative, but the remainder was not. The notes of the aria rose in the old, dusty room: Violetta's heartache at being betrayed in each syllable, her newfound passion for Alfredo in the sensual expression on her face, in the slight movement of her body, and the achingly poignant hope that life could be something more than barren in the quiet moments between the two. Young though Christine might be, it was easy to forget that during the song, which was too loud for the close quarters, yes, but which did not suffer for it.
The modern ear was trained with bouts of idiotic percussion and dramatic guitar rifts, but the old ear, the ear of the last century, was trained on a higher scale, for voices to match the violin and the flute. Daniel’s ear was an old one, sunk into tradition that he had chosen as his rebellion a very long time ago. She was too close and he knew that, and after the first few notes he knew it was going to be an amazing performance and he only grew more irritated at the acoustics of the room as time went on. All the same, Daniel was an attentive audience. His listening could be seen as easily as his attention, a certain angle to his spine as he sat forward slightly over his knees, the faint lines at the edges of his eyes and mouth. For the first half of the song, he watched her face, but after about five minutes, he concentrated on the ground and therefore, the music. He sat back when she was done, or at least when she hit what he recognized as the near end, and again contemplated her form, the strange top to bottom slide of his eyes. There was no excited applause from his corner, no excited tittering. He watched her as the notes ended. The close quarters made his ears ring just slightly, and he listened to that as he watched.
She did not even remember there was a room until she sang the last note, and she did not remember that there was an audience until the note finished ringing. She looked down at her feet a moment, confused as to why the floorboards were not trembling as they did beneath her feet when she sang, and a moment later she remembered that it was because there existed no orchestra here to make it do so. She blinked slowly, her smile an entirely satisfied and unthinkingly sensual thing, the pleasure from the song making her cheeks red and her breath heavy in her chest. She pulled at the high, prim collar of the afternoon dress, not accustomed to such things on the stage, and she crooked her head to the side in a gesture of universal questioning, but it was a slow, earthy movement, unthinking and without guile. "Monsieur?" she asked, voice gone slightly hoarse from the song, and she asked the unspoken question with the certainty of someone who knew when she had hit all the notes. It was something she had learned early in her lessons, to hear when she failed. She had not failed, and she was pleased with herself, without any of the offensive vanity of a seasoned diva.
Daniel knew she had hit all the notes too. He did not fault her her pride, and he would not even if it had the sweep and drag of a diva’s ensemble. Yet he also did not fall on his knees and praise, or faint with delight. “C’est bon,” he said. It was simplistic, almost casual. It bordered on well enough. It was not insulting but nor was it raptures. He just said it was good and expected the whole thing to carry on. It was not right for such a small room. He envied the stupid people beyond her door, they knew not what they had. “But you are right; you need additional study. In the light.” He raised both brows with the direct implication. “With a teacher that has experience in more than one place.”
It was, of course, the kind of compliment that was not a compliment at all, and it brought her feet firmly back down to earth. She did not explain away that she had not been near a stage since Raoul burnt down the Opera House, because in this there were no excuses. She was accustomed to a strict teacher, one who expected perfection, and she knew managers and patrons could be the same, especially to someone who was not a diva of known standing. Still she shook her head. "It was better than you say," she said confidently, but with no bite, before conceding that, "mais oui. I know that I would benefit from more instruction, but this is unlikely, as a stage is not in my future." Even with his patronage, she expected private performances for less discriminating guests and decadent parties, perhaps a protector as time went on, but nothing more. "You do not believe he is worth much, my instructor?" she asked, and she followed it with a careful shrug. "It does not matter. I no longer hear him."
“I said it was good. And it was good. In opera, you are good, or you are not. There is not an in between. I am one man in a great number. Accept that it was good or don’t care that I thought it was anything. But do not inform me what I think.” He was irritated and his French grew fluid again, babbles in a brook. “Lessons would not hurt you, especially if they were lessons from someone who is not obsessed with your every move. I do not think such a man is worth much, no. He would sacrifice you to possess you. You may think about that, if you prefer.” Daniel curled his fingers together to rest them against his palm. He wanted a drink; not desperately, but because he just did, and usually did, unless he had one. He forced himself to concentrate, but her presence was small and feminine and defiant, and it made him nervous. It was sudden, but true. Her confidence set him on edge. Taking one foot, he pushed the brown bag out into the center of the room in her direction.
"In everything in life there is variance. Good is good enough, and as a singer I strive to be better than this," she explained, sounding every bit the professional in that moment, even if time and dress and her age said she should be none of these things. "I do not do the music justice if I accept good as being enough, and I do not deserve to sing if I do not endeavor to be better, and so my ears hear, and I listen, and I know precisely where I dragged too long or went too fast. It was only truth, no more, and not a criticism of your opinion." She smiled, an unknowing songbird in the room with something much larger. His ire made his French sound more natural, more as it should, even to her antiquated ears, and she did not mind it. Should he wish to impress her with anger, he would need to do much more than that. She watched the curl of his hand with dark, observant eyes, and she watched his foot kick the bag almost to her feet. "I would not have the voice I have today without him," she said honestly. Obsessed or no, it was that obsession that saw her taught at all; no one else would waste their time on an orphan with no way to pay for lessons.
Daniel did not seek to impress. He either did, or he didn’t; usually he did, in one way or another, bad or good. When he got angry it was like watching a housecat try to swat a fly, pointless and not intimidating. Daniel’s anger was only unfortunate if you were trying to get information or feeling out of him, because he closed up like a clam when something really got to him. “I am aware. But you do not owe him your future. Remember that. Such men need to control to be happy, and soon enough, you won’t be able to allow it. Little girls grow too quickly.” He left the bag in the sea of space between them, and drew his feet back. His grip on his arms tightened.
She laughed, and perhaps it was the first indication in all of their correspondence that any of what had occurred in her past had affected her. "Oui, monsieur? You think I do not know this? For the Ghost, as for Raoul, there is no space for anything in my life but them. Raoul, had he not cast me off, would not allow me to sing. It is not the thing for a Vicomtesse, you see. As for Erik, he would hide me in darkness and only allow me light on the stage, at his discretion. I am young, monsieur, but I am no little girl. I did not lie to you when I said it had ended badly, and I was left to fend for myself. I chose Montmartre, and the life there, but Erik came with promises of home, and so I returned. But home is not as it was, and neither am I, and he still expects the trusting girl I once was, as does Raoul," she explained with a small, elegant shrug, and she bent at the knee to pick up the bag, unthinking, in the way you pick up something that has fallen to the floor. "Do you wish to hear the other song, or have I preemptively ended my audition with my inappropriate behavior?" Because she acknowledged this, that she was not as demure as was required for her station. Even as a fallen woman - perhaps more so - a man like Daniel commanded respect.
Daniel did not like her laughter. He did not like that she so casually dismissed what these men were so willing to do. It galled him, and it distracted him from what he thought he wanted, his solitude, his drunken absence of mind. Daniel sat up even as she drew up the brown bag, which was heavy as a pail of water. “You let them move you about like pieces on the board, only clumsier than you yourself may do it, and you laugh?” His expression contorted in disdain and mixed anger the color of new metal and just as hot. “No, I don’t want another damn song.” He said it aggressively, threw it out like a whip, countered his strange sympathy with a lash of anger meant to divide them further where there might otherwise have been a bridge. She would stay on that side of the room, and not because he wanted any fucking respect.
She was about to look in the bag when he spoke, wondering what made it so heavy, but his words kept her gaze from dropping down to it, and she stood instead. Disdain was not something she had experience in, but she understood the cursing and the disapproval in his voice, and she shook her head, a brown ringlet escaping and chasing along one of her cheeks. "I allowed it once, but this is my move, Daniel. This room, considering a patron, that is my move. Raoul would have me back. He fills the wardrobe closet daily with blooms, and I suspect a mistress is what he seeks. Erik will remember me then, if Raoul succeeds. I will not allow it, not again. It is my move, inelegant as it is, but for my time, it is daring and taboo and frightening," she explained, and when she moved across the room it was without any understanding that she was not meant to do so. The bag, heavy in her hand, was placed beside her when she sat on the vacated chair.
“Erik. Raoul.” Daniel said it with not just dislike but the same red-gray disdain from earlier, as if the names tasted foul on his tongue. “They still rule you, whether you realize it or not,” he said, sharply, grunting as he pushed away from the chair. On his feet he caught his weight against the chair with one knee. “Merde.” Did the creature not eat? Not sleep? Was Daniel just not superhuman enough for a fucking forest and a castle? His mood in tatters and his tongue dry, Daniel put his back to the girl in favor of the door. “Hire a teacher, take lessons. Do not sell them all in one place, or a they will throttle you for the rest.” Another staggering step and Daniel pushed for the hall.
She was considering his words, attempting to find a way to explain that her world was ruled by men and, unless she could free herself of that world, then she would always be ruled by someone. She did not notice immediately when he stood, and her expression was momentarily crestfallen when she realized he intended to leave. His comment, however, made her look down at the bag that waited by her booted foot, and she looked inside.
Daniel’s standards for life apparently slid up and down according to his mood and his whim, but his standards for music did not. The bag contained a heavy wooden box that shut in carved clasps shaped like dragons. The clasps were made of the kind of hammered metal that would not rust, but within there were beds of soft red velvet and two sets of sixteen chessmen each. Mythic gryphons reared and devils coiled in the silver pieces and angels spread their wings beside bishops and parish priests in the gold pieces. Tiny rubies and sapphires made up the eyes of the gold pieces, but the silver pieces sparkled with diamonds.
Daniel slammed the door behind him.
By the time she looked up, one of the small rooks in her hand, the door was closing. As soon as it did, she found herself back in her wardrobe closet, and she did not move from where she sat, on her rickety chair, the one she sewed at. It was a long while until she took the box out of the bag, and until she slid it into the safest pile of memories she could find in the small closet. She would not sell them, and she should not keep them. It was not right, and she would tell him as much. Only not just then. A day, perhaps two, oui?