Musical Notes
Rating: T, I guess.
Warnings: Spoilers on the subject of Cara and Grantes, implications of what grownups do together, dysfunctional Cara/Grantes. Illegal activities.
Disclaimer: No, my lack-of-ownership status for Legend of Legaia has NOT changed since so long ago last week.
A/N: So I finally wrote out one of my plotbunnies for oneshots. The idea was that if Cara was able to play a song for Grantes on the Soren flute out of the blue, without ever probably having played (or even seen) a Soren flute before, she must have had some very considerable musical talent, so I took it and ran. The game never said Cara robbed houses, too, but it also never said she doesn't. Hooray, ambiguity! This takes place years after there's already Mist, but before the game. (11/2/07 : noticed I'd forgotten to section it off, and did so. The story's jumping about doesn't make any sense if it isn't sectioned off. It's modeled to be rather like the verse/chorus sectioning of a song, and the sections themselves don't jump about very much.)
Cara's looking through the window, plotting the best plan of escape so she can be done and out of there before whoever owned the house found out they'd been robbed. It wasn't as if she'd be hurting them too much (the house was, after all, extremely large), and she probably wouldn't get caught this time. She'd taken care to only steal gold. Last time when she'd gone to sell the statue she'd taken, the clerk had given her that knowing look, as if he could tell she'd stolen it, but he'd let it slide, once. Taking money was more graceful, anyhow, cutting out the middle man and going on her way.
If she goes down the stairs, someone could see her leaving the house, and the neighbors probably know by now who lives here. They'll be able to tell that Cara doesn't. She'll take the chance with the window in the back. They've left it open—that was how she got into the house in the first place—and going down will be only a little harder than coming up. What then? She could simply climb down the side of the house, with its boards set in so deep they served as footholds on the way up, but she'd need both hands, and she'd have to hold the bag of gold in her mouth. If she fell, she could break her teeth on a coin, and even if she didn't, she'd drool on the bag, and look absolutely ridiculous besides. No, that would certainly not do.
So Cara jumps. And she's falling, with that feeling inside her chest and the air rushing around and on her, but it's a safe fall. She can count the beats she has left before her fall is over. Her legs are bending and twisting like a cat's, ready to support her weight, and she doesn't even lose her balance when she hits the ground. And she's running away from the house and the town, the gold coins jingling in the bag, and once she's out of view, she slows down to a stroll. And damn it, that was fun.
She'd have laughed out loud all the way from the house, if she hadn't cared about anyone noticing she was there. Later today, she'll see Grantes. She'll put up a show that she won't pay for it this time, but both of them know she'll give in. He can't fly anymore, but she still can. She just did. She won't tell him, but she'll think it again and again and again, and then it'll even harder for her to keep from laughing.
"You must see the world in musical notes, or something," Grantes had told her, amazed, after she'd played him a new song she'd written for him on the flute. She didn't explain to him exactly how he was wrong—she didn't see a cluster of notes in the air instead of his face, and musical notes weren't ever really seen, but heard and felt. But he'd been mostly right, and that was the first time she'd noticed it. Everything could be a song, counted off and arranged, ever since…ever. Her father had played something with strings, maybe a mandolin or lute, and her mother had clapped the beat. Cara herself danced around and sang, stepping in circles.
Now she could play the piano, too, and most flutes or stringed instruments, too, provided she had a chance to experiment a little first, and figure out what to do with the instrument to produce what notes, and of course she could steal. She chalked it up to being good with her hands. She could make Grantes absolutely scream, too, when she didn't feel like wrapping her hands around his throat, or bashing his head into the counter of that bar, again and again and again until he wouldn't ever be getting up from his favorite barstool. With all the time he spent there, he was on track to become permanently attached anyway at some point, even if Cara didn't end up killing him.
She stole from ruins when there wasn't the chance to rob houses and she needed the money, and when she told herself she needed the money but she really just needed to blow off some steam. With houses, there was the exhilaration, the chance she'd get caught, but who really cared if she stole from places nobody lived in anymore, and were too dangerous for most people to even reach? She performed with a flourish, anyway, cartwheeling around dangers and jumping out of the way when just a step could have done it.
Overdramatics were silly, but some things had to be done with style, and there had to be something in the way of style because once she was done, she'd get the whatever-she-was-taking-that-day and haul it off to sell, and then she'd take the money and pay the bills to make sure Grantes had food and shelter and enough alcohol to make it okay for a little while that he wasn't a Soren anymore, and wasn't it better off before, when the only thing he wanted from her was herself? He'd had his Cara, and that was all that mattered, and he'd told her, he'd promised her—HE'D PROMISED HER—that oh honey, he'd try his best to get her a beautiful pair of wings, and then they could fly together, but if he couldn't convince them to let her join them, then he'd leave them and live with her on the ground, and maybe he'd miss it all but he'd have his Cara, so he would be happy, and no matter what, it would all be okay. And sure, she'd hoped for her wings, but no matter what, it would all be okay, and she knew she'd finally be happy.
But he didn't give up his wings. They'd been taken from him. And he wasn't happy, and it all wasn't okay. Her happy fairytale ending was gone (although she still had her Grantes) and damned if she didn't feel angry and awful and awkward as anything. So style was necessary. A-step to the side and one and two and turn and make sure to only step on the parts of the floor that can still hold your weight, and turn and spin and you might have to stretch a little to reach that next tile, but do it gracefully. Jump a little, but wait until the right moment, and there, now take the treasure (that day it was a pair of beautiful golden bracelets) and now turn around and do it in reverse. She'd gotten into a yelling match with him that morning, and as she wore the golden bracelets on her wrists, if only for a moment, Cara felt happy and relieved as she counted the beats of her footsteps on the ground, kicking up dust.
She wasn't a martyr. She simply refused to be. When it got really bad, she'd fight back, stepping circles around the conversation, letting out hints that she'd been with other men while she was away. She hadn't thought it would hurt him as much as she did, and at first she felt like he deserved it, but only hours later she'd ended up breaking down and tearfully telling the truth, that he was the only one for her. The next morning, she resolved never to jerk him around like that again…and, of course, she used the same almost-lie the next time she was at the end of her rope. Cara didn't think dancing about an untruth without touching it really counted as lying. Lying was wrong, and she couldn't afford any guilt at the moment.
Cara was a good thief, and knowing that gave her a sense of pride. Maybe she'd turned to her profession in desperate times, but there definitely was a sort of joy in stealing when she did it right. After all, there were worse things to do for a living than to steal. She didn't really have a choice about it, so these were her options: she could love it, or she could hate it. There didn't seem to be a middle ground.
Well, she didn't want to be like Grantes, angry about circumstances he could no longer change. She didn't want to sit around and wallow in the fact that things hadn't gone according to plan. Maybe he'd lost his wings, and maybe she had to steal to support him, but that didn't mean she'd just lie down and admit defeat. She could be happy stealing for him, even if she'd have to grit her teeth and hold back her tears. She never would have to tell him. She could scream it in his face how miserable she was, and he'd never have to know she was okay. She'd be okay, no matter how hard it would be.
It was a pleasant surprise that there really were no tears to hold back. Everything could be a song. After all, she saw the world in musical notes. He had told her so himself. Did it matter that it didn't look much like flight? And anyway, lately, it felt better to steal and run and have the wind in her hair than it did to scream at Grantes across a crowded bar, or to hear him talk about longingly about the Soren camps with that look in his eyes that used to be reserved for when the lovers had to part. "I've been stealing for you for years," she'd yell, "and this is how you treat me?" The stealing wasn't the part that hurt her. It was wrong and she could get caught and really, she shouldn't be doing it, but she couldn't describe how it made her feel without sounding like a silly little girl, and it was still her reprieve. Everything else, on the other hand… she doesn't want to think like this.
But it's for Grantes. Once he's got his shit together, and he's over it all and she's his everything again, there's not going to be any more stealing, because there's not going to be a reason to steal, not anymore.
She doesn't think about why she's stealing when she's doing it. She's making her way back to him, but she doesn't want to think about him until she absolutely has to, because it's going to break her out of her sunny day feeling. She's a tricky girl, and she can fool herself better than anyone. She's stepping in circles, once there's no choice but to think about Grantes, telling herself that of course he'll pull himself out of this soon, maybe even today! He'll be glad to see her, he'll even come to meet her completely sober instead of waiting in the bar, and they'll go out to dinner with the money she's brought. He'll tell her how nice she looks today, and she'll be his Cara, and he won't say anything at all about Soren or about wings or about anything that drags him down.
She's stepping in circles, too, when she tells herself how great it'll be to quit being a two-bit thief, or that it won't be damn hard, or that she even really wants to.