Authors Note: Title from "The Scholar-Gypsy" by Matthew Arnold. This piece dovetails the episode "Arabesque," detailing the story of Lisa, Vincent's first love, and the chaos that episodes sweeps around everywhere.
It was about dancing.
It was always about dancing.
It was not a world. It was not a realm or a room or a stage.
It was about the turn of her feet and the sway of her arms. It was about the way the music made her ache each time she heard it the same way it had taken her heart the first time she'd seen it.
Even more it was about the suffocating times between dancing, when her feet were bare and the lights were off. It was about that stifling, terrifying elastic, bone chilling second by second count between them.
It was about the memory of endless years before she'd gotten a teacher. And if her greatest dream, her interview and her internship to the great ballet school, might have been at a far too convenient moment, it was just another lesson that dreams were about knowing sacrifice was necessary.
All sacrifice was necessary.
Everything was dressed and placed upon the altar of the shoes, the costumes, the lights, and, best and most beloved, the moment when the music started, the moment when the world no longer existed.
The moment when she was most free and most herself and most removed from whoever she was or would be or might have been.
In that moment there was never play down or applause or existence.
Only music, only movement, only ballet.
When one watched Lisa dancing, there was such abandon that no other world but Lisa's might exist. The candles had danced, flickering shadows on her skin and her coal black hair, had changing here face and dulcet fairytale voice to a silent prostration that would be profane to even relate to religious.
He had watched her. Every day, every moment, she danced, from the first breaths of gestations, rereading her sections from books about ballerina's to tracking down the tunnels that might reach grates within the grand halls of New York.
She was more beautiful than any Goddess or Nymph she played, in floating pink silk, more real in the way she'd stop and smile, wide eyed and knowing, aware of audience and playing upon it.
Had he only know how well, how masterfully, she'd played up on her audience.
He'd never known that until she'd returned. Until her dulcet song of happiness, of good things, of moments of laughter, were only broken warbling of a song bird long caged and still painting stain glass on the cage.
Yet her very smile, the very way she tilted her head, or slunk through the bars on the stairs instead of descending them, so like the young girl of his childhood nightmares, his childhood fantasy's, he could almost reach out to it again.
That crazed sensation when love was nothing more than a game, nothing more than an ache, than a confusing giddying, hopeful, terrible burn that had no name. Where pink silk and words meant more than breathing, meant more than thinking, went as deep as wounding.
He saw her now, more real, if in half shadow, than he'd ever seen her when she flew.
She was free and suffocated and lovely, like an ancient dilapidated arts building, like New York at night, breaking at the bars.
In the silence, she spoke, to fill what could never be filled, their eyes could meet and the conversation between them was a language which brooked through theirs, their mouths, their moving hands, and sinewy bodies.
And what passed between was the stuff of dreams, of nightmares, of worlds untold, between the reality and the hell. It was a fantasy to be overlooked for the memory of home. For the memory of the stage. For playing the returned princess and grousing as one would with family.
There must be some spot, some sacred finger print, untouched, unforgotten, perfect and pleasant and pleasing, never having forgotten her girlish laughter. The hazy, half formed, whispers, where one, of darkness and tunnels, dared to dream of light in the lights, not simply those of the sun, but those of the entire worlds eyes.
And if, when the music stopped, her soot black eyes, under layers of stage cake, had sought through the audience for a pair of blue eyes, edged in gold, that she never once found, it was only a passing fancy, a dream inspired by the music.
There were green eyes now that watched her, watched her close, drowned out the voices and choices and waving hands and microphones. Green eyes and brown hair, that though she swore against fate she had cause to love, she might never like, might never be truly contented in the gaze of.
That had been obvious from the moment the other woman had looked up from laying on Vincent's bed, into that face, so cold and dark, a Botticelli's lover, cold and dark and pale, made for deep memories, sharp shadows.
A ballerina she might applaud, but a woman she longed to tear from the ground.
In her eyes, their eyes, a raging storm.
Of bullets and bastards and beasts.
Eyes that had stolen what was once hers, was supposed to be always hers.
A dream no one could touch, a lark no word could brook, the most special dream of a life. A golden heart, singular and true, were all truth was never brooked but flowed forth like a stream, where all things were shared, were dared, were trusted and true.
And in those eyes, those green eyes, that sparked with willfulness, even under unmeant unkindness, she felt that anger, that vengeful spirit, that might never had rested in a once ne'er-do-well lover.
That spoke volumes on depth of her passion, on the willingness of the defense to prosecute her to the full extent of love's laws for the transgression of breathing too near, being too near, daring to be.
Spoke volumes to what she had lost, what she had tossed, and turned away from.
Scars lingering on a body as scars lingered elsewhere on a heart, lingered on her own lost heart.
Somewhere along the way the music had grown stale and the light garish, the makeup too thin, and the shoes too worn. Somewhere along the way the stage had gotten too small and the world too big. Somewhere guns had come in and freedom had gone out.
A silver chain had encircled her wrist, had underwritten her affections and affectations.
Had given to itself the power of the play down.
To douse the lights and the music, and all her dreams one by one by one by one.
Until the world was no more stage or room or realm. Until there was no dancing. Until the dance had died.
Until the blue, gold edged eyes, of childhood, came to her, wearing the mask of the green ones with fiery compassion. They were his other eyes, his other hands, she could see that even never seeing them but the once together in the room at the end.
He stood behind her, watching, silent, her specter, her shadow, her ghost.
The words have been unkind, yet kinder than those investing in the heart, in the soul, in the protection of this world. They had longed to be worse and would not, longed to rend, to send, to deny, and did it not.
It was not in her power to exile and she was not one to exile.
Even in that face, famous and beautiful and tattered of time.
Even in that face, sad and drawn of shadows and shame.
Even in that face, unknowing and unknown and chosen.
Where truth was a vision of shattered singulars and sampler, things forgotten and forgiven and half remembered, never to be forgotten or forgiven or forestalled by time.
Except in the vision, except in an angel, her hands with hidden scars and hidden claws, raising the blade high in the sky. Except in one who knew them best by knowing them least, who defended them best in not knowing the truth, who accepted where exception lay.
Who never heard the music or sway, felt the heart heat of day, the play down or play.
But who knew their hearts as if she'd born them.