In the last moments of my life, I saw it.
I knew.
I saw- him! Eyes burning, eyes watering in musical heat, lusting after my life's blood.
My Requiem.
And I let myself fall backwards. All faded. My weary eyes closed.
I was already gone.
Then there was the muffled sound of a door.
Little footsteps followed by smaller feet.
She...!
The room was spinning, aching, burning.
The room was... slipping.
Her sweet image was fleeting, a death bed vision. All was blurred, my boy beside me playing with the coins I died for to buy him bread.
And her! My love, my life, my sweet wife, her face so close to mine.
I never said a word to her.
I was suddenly too weak.
I wanted to laugh, I wanted to laugh, but I could make no sound.
I really did love you, I breathed. She didn't hear.
I couldn't speak, I couldn't say. I tried so hard to fix my last words. I tried to tell her. I couldn't.
I had wasted my last words.
She turned her back to face the man. Iago! Brutus! Judas! Oh, hell...
I blinked, my eyes heavy with sleep. Eyes open. No rest.
She wept over me, my angel wept, and it was the doing of a hateful man who never understood.
A man who feigned friendship to gain what he lacked.
A man full of envy and wrath and avarice, who never loved and never lived, who never saw the lives he destroyed outside of mine.
A man who rejoiced when his father died when my own father's death had killed me inside.
I harbored no disdain for him in my heart, I never will.
My last words were spoken true.
In that moment, before my muteness, when Salieri stood before me, I had looked at him and told him I had never thought he cared for me.
I was right.
And I asked him for his forgiveness.
It was never granted.