A/N: My loves! So, I have a potential new story for you. It pretty much just started writing itself two nights ago and needless to say, I've been fighting with myself on whether or not it was worth posting. I have ideas of where it could go but I'll only write more if you all think it's something you'd want to read. I truly value each and everyone of your responses and opinions, so please let me know.
And a big thank you to my girl, Bekka, who convinced me to post this in the first place. I think she's biased... shh... lol! Love you, bella!
It's true what they say. You never know what you have until it's gone, until it's torn harshly from your fingertips by some malicious force that laughs at your pain. When you're watching the person you love most frozen on the dock with tears streaming down his face while your ship pulls away to some faraway port, never to return again. I never expected to become so lost in the fantasy we had created, born in the dark shadows under a stage, until they tried to haul me off for good in their quest for a perfect world. I was an abomination against humanity. There was no place for people like me—like us.
The world was in turmoil. It was like the very air around you threatened to collapse and bury you under its ruins. It was thick with the smell of gunpowder and the dust of shattered concrete swirled in the wind, choking your lungs. It seemed like the engulfing dark of night was never-ending. The whistling of bombs falling and the terrifying stomp of hundreds of boots against the agony of the soprano's aria still haunt me as I lie awake at night. Sometimes I can still see their immaculately polished rifles propped menacingly over their shoulders, that glinted in the Mediterranean sun as they marched their way along the Milanese streets keeping order and looking for a new shipment of invalids and contaminants to the new race to send to slaughter like pigs. Mussolini was gone, run out of Italy like the coward he was, and all of the country, all of the world it felt, was under Nazi control. And their target was on my back.
Was it worth staring down the barrel of a gun and being thrust on a train to hell just for a few stolen moments? That is for you to decide. Was it worth the danger of revealing a secret that branded me as someone to dispose of, just so I could feel the touch of his hands running along my back as he kissed me behind the curtain of the stage, the sound of the audience's applause thundering around us? I cannot make that decision for you. Because I question it myself sometimes. Was I wise to listen to his pleas to run rather than stay with him and face whatever came our way? Was my life even worth living if he wasn't in it?
I came to Milan two years earlier, in 1941, looking to make a name for myself in the prolific Italian opera world. My dreams were seeped in the image of La Scala Opera House, even when my peers at the orphanage called me a fool for even thinking a pale, scrawny thing such as I could be worthy of a place like that. I believed myself to be something of a rarity, my countertenor voice always somewhat strange among my choir mates growing up. While their voices transformed from light and high to deep and smooth, mine barely changed. I was naïve enough to believe that what I had was special.
But I wasn't special, I guess.
I grew up in the outskirts of London, moving there from America as an infant with my parents for my father's work. He was always moving us from place to place, promising that the next opportunity would be the one to lift us from the impending poverty brought about by his risky behavior. One night he came home reeking of gin, punching a hole into the wall before going on a tirade, blaming my mother and I for all our hardships. I was barely four years old and yet the image of his red, furious face as he shouted at my mother, his fist raised above her head, scarred me. We left after that, my mother and I, she fearful that he would hurt me in another drunken rage. She raised be as best she could and for a while, we seemed to be okay. "You're all I need, Kurt love," would croon as she held me until I fell asleep each night.
Until she got sick. We couldn't afford to get her help so it was a matter of time before she wasn't there anymore. I was four. The nuns at the orphanage told me when I was older that it was pneumonia and that there was no way to save her.
I was there until I was eighteen. I went through the constant streaming in and out of friends and peers that were taken away by strangers promising them better lives. I hope they got them. The nuns were nice enough, I suppose, though I can't say they did anything to strengthen my belief in a god who would take away the one person who loved me. They clothed me, fed me, educated me with what little resources we had. And it was there where I discovered I could sing. Every Sunday I stood on the side of the altar with my peers, in my choir robe, where we sang our praises and hymns to our Lord. Singing was the only thing that made life seem less bleak. I decided that that is where my life was meant to go and that soon as I was old enough, I would pursue that dream, at any and all costs.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was awarded with a dusty old notebook, to write down my thoughts, and the news that I was too old to be living in the orphanage anymore. I wasn't too heartbroken. With nothing more than a few pounds in my pocket and a stupid dream in my head, I boarded a steamboat from London to Brussels before talking my way onto a train to the Northern Italian hub of culture, fashion, and music, my eyes wide with the prospect of my impending fame. The gloriously designed, papyrus-colored façade of the opera house, with its pointed roof and wide balcony, seemed like the perfect place to start my new life.
I found myself instead in a dingy, two-roomed apartment on the 4th floor of a dusty building in some dark, forgotten corner of the city. The walls were cracked and paper thin, and we were lucky if we had even five minutes of lukewarm water with which to wash our stage makeup off at night. I lived with Anya, a young ballet dancer from St. Petersburg who had come to Milan with the same desire for recognition. But we were both stuck in the shadows of people more famous than we were.
Everyday I sang my scales and warmed up my voice, the sound clear and powerful, only to be thrust back into the ensemble and drowned out by the soaring, velvet-smooth voice of Antonio Carsotti, the handsome and world-famous principal tenor of the Italian opera. There was no denying his talent-listening to him sing was otherworldly. He made the very hairs on my neck stand on end each time he took the stage, standing like it was his God-given right. He was truly beautiful to look at: His large emerald eyes shone like lanterns against his dark olive skin, completely opposite from my ivory coloring, and his chocolate brown hair fell gracefully over his forehead as he lifted his head to belt out every final, soaring note. His jaw was strong and square and his nose perfectly straight and thin, unlike mine that widened at the end. He was tall and built, each elaborate costume hugging the curves of his body gracefully. He commanded attention and it was near impossible to deny him. I suppose that's where my troubles started.
"You! 'Ummell!" Antonio snapped his fingers at me, his Italian accent thick as he called my name. I stepped forward, it was better not to make him even more angry, and looked up at him, used to his complaints.
"You are still too loud! I can hear you as I sing. This is my opera, not yours," he spat, his piercing green eyes sliding over my body, judging me, as though I should feel honored that he was looking at me at all. I didn't know why he had chosen me as his verbal punching bag, but it was nearly each rehearsal where he'd find something to scold me for, treating me as though I was some incompetent child. I urged myself to remain silent and willed my burning cheeks to fade as I stepped back in line with the ensemble, avoiding the smirks of my fellow chorus members.
"I think he likes you," Marco, an older, chubby stagehand whispered as he painted the set piece behind me. I threw him a disgusted glare and crossed my arms, waiting for Antonio to finish ranting to the maestro about the pace of his conducting.
"Da capo!" Antonio shouted, and the orchestra began the aria from the beginning, the tenor taking his position downstage. Instead of singing with the chorus, I mouthed the words, thereby giving him no other reason to stop the rehearsal because of me.
A/N: Good? Bad? Worth continuing? Please let me know. :)