Title: APhantom Melody
Summary: One melody, one song, so many different meanings. To all of the people who had listened to that song, a different significance rose. /Jack, Glen, Eliot, Oz, Reo and Lotti-cenric/
Rating: T
Author's Note: Just a little thing that I wrote on a whim. Nothing much else to say here… Enjoy it.
Disclaimer: I do not own DGM, or Timcanpy's onesided love.
…
"I harbor all the old affections. Roses are the past."
-'Every Time You Kissed Me' by Yuki Kajiura
…
An eerie noise. That's all it was. The phantom melody of days past, coming once again to haunt him with its sickening sweetness. Glen hated that song. Glen hated those lyrics. But most of all Glen hated the hollow feeling inside his body that came whenever he heard that music and hated how helpless he was and hated how he could not save the one who that song was written for. When he listened he knew that there was nothing left there for him in that song any longer. All that the song spoke of were days that became more and more distant with each passing breath and memories that became more vague with each tick of the clock.
However, the problem was, there was nothing inside of him without that song. And that made him ask himself, was there anything there for him in life in the first place?
...
The song had come from nowhere. It was so different from anything else that Eliot had ever written; it seemed almost familiar to him, in a way. When he had first been able to plunk out the tune on the piano it seemed to Eliot that this music had always been within him, just waiting to escape and release itself to the world. There was nothing work-like about writing that song, no labor involved at all; there had been nothing difficult about it, much unlike usual. The notes just sprung from his hands as if they had already been installed within them years ago and were waiting. It was just that now was the time that they had chosen to emerge forth from him.
Eliot loved Lacie, every note, and every chord. There was something tragic about this song that he could not put his finger on. He did not know why he had chosen the name Lacie for his composition; it had come to him in a half-remembered dream one night. Still, no other name would fit the piece. No other name would have made his song complete.
...
Seeing Glen, his friend, like that was torture. Complete and utter torture unlike anything he had known before. Glen was Jack's best friend and the person who he cared most about. It was too much to watch him forlornly stare at an old pocket watch as if it was his only comfort in the world, the only thing worth living for. Whenever Jack watched him that was what was Glen was doing, and Jack tended to watch Glen from the corner of his eye quite a bit.
Glen would never know how much Jack watched him; Glen would never know that Jack cared so much. It would be embarrassing for the both of them for Jack to admit the depth of his feelings for his friend. Nothing romantic, of course, but more than a Vessalius should care about a Baskerville. Still, no matter how embarrassing it was for them, Jack knew how much pain Glen was in, and it was enough to drive him insane.
...
Reo hated that song. Reo hated everything about that song. But for some reason, despite his usual honesty, Reo could not tell Eliot his feelings about the music, about how he hated with a passion the thing that Eliot was most proud of. To Reo, everything that Eliot wrote was sacred, in a way. Beautiful, mysterious, wonderful… Just like Eliot was to Reo. But this song was not Eliot; it was different.
The melody was weak, the chords weaker. It seemed to Reo that it was not near the same caliber of sophistication that Eliot usually strived to achieve in his music. The melancholy that Eliot found in the music was nothing more than danger to Reo's ears. Inspired by some frightful nightmare, this song brought chills to his spine, making Reo want nothing more than to lay down and to die. This song was not inspired, beautiful or tragic; this song was not Eliot's.
...
Lacie had been a dreadful girl; at least that was what Lotti always thought. Falling behind, making a fuss, doing things wrong... That was all Lacie was good for. A relatively unfair judgment, Lotti knew, but the one that she had made long ago. Lotti thought it was insane that she had been the one that Glen had fallen for; he could have had any girl in the world but he had chosen the one that Lotti hated the most. When the girl had died -a tragic sacrifice to the Abyss to most, but not to her- Lotti had thought that they would finally be rid of that presence that haunted her master so. However, much to her despair, there was still that song, played more than any other song by Glen, making Lotti lose all hope, all joy, in her life.
When Lacie was gone, Lotti had thought that maybe her master would be able to find inspiration elsewhere. In someone else, maybe, even. But no; instead all there was that song and that pocket watch and when Lacie was gone, there was no more music at all.
...
"That song," Oz asks Eliot, almost seeming to be lost in his own thoughts as he spoke. "Did you really write it?" Eliot nods, more than angry-looking. "Sorry to offend you, but it just sounded familiar to me."
Eliot does not wish to tell Oz that he was not the first person to tell him that, to mention that maybe they heard that tune before as some sort of memory always waiting in the back of their mind. However, Eliot knew that the song was his, entirely his; there was no way that it wasn't. When his hands wrote the notes, they were coming from inside him. From inside his own turbulent mind. Those nightmares and prayers that plagued his night had known this song from within them for a long time; it was only now, however, that he could ever capture the dream and put it into song. Lacie was his creation, his vision. No one could have possibly taken that from within him.
"Who was Lacie, then?" Oz asks him, his eyes staring at Eliot with an intensity that he had not thought Oz capable of.
And Eliot is at a loss for words. "I..." Eliot searches his mind, but suddenly all that he can think of is fire and brimstone, of a world that only haunted his nightmares. The thinks of a soft smile and a soft voice, his only comfort in that world of death and destruction. But there was nothing there that gave him concrete examples, no stories to tell Oz to convince him that Lacie was real, but just something that he was unable to touch. "I don't..." In the distance a clock strikes twelve, chiming for each hour. A woman cries out to him and a man cries out against him. Both sounds are horrible to Eliot's ears. "I'm not..." Blood; there was blood everywhere. There had always been blood surrounding him, his life, and his mere existence. And because of that, there had always been blood surrounding her, waiting until their happiest moments to come out and free itself. Was there fate? He would never know. However, if there was fate, fate was cruel. It was easier to blame something, it was easier to be able to not think and call fate out for its anger and ruthlessness. Nevertheless, something must have been done. The blood, the blood… "I..."
Eliot shook his head; these thoughts were not his own, foreign and tasting like poison in his mind.
"I'm tired, I have to leave." Wordlessly, he got up and left Oz behind as fast as he could, ignoring Oz's pleas for him to stay. They were then both left to think alone on what they had seen and what they had heard, the phantom melody playing always plucking its way through their minds as a reminder of the secrets that they would never know the answers to.
...
Fin