you're too young & eager to love

There are so many aspects to this character that I want to write about/flesh out. I start one piece, my mind tries to spin, and I end up trying to cram every idea into one four page disconnected story. Then I feel disappointed when I don’t get all my ideas to cohesively come together in one piece. Imagine that. I could do a novel … if I started outlining and pacing myself.

Things that I still need to write about: Roman’s holocaust memories, Roman’s fledgling, Roman’s maker, actual interactions with Lene.

Things this piece wanted to focus on: all of the above.

Things this piece accomplished: none of that (seriously, what the hell, brain?)

The ending line is the title of a song I can’t stop listening to. It’s absolutely stolen.

--



There is something classically sorrowful about Mahler’s fifth symphony. The funereal trumpet swells, dips, and makes Roman’s shoulders stiffen, but it is the adagietto that sends his mind backwards, tumbling through memories held by the strings of violins and harps.

He had hoped that time would dull the past, thicken it with fog, but his memory has only become sharper as he ages. He can recollect entire sunrises from his human youth, the time before daylight became his enemy; he can remember the way his wife’s hair had always smelled like lavender before the sickness inside of her ate away her lungs and life; he thinks he could still identify a snipe’s courtship winnowing, although the only authentic birdsong he has heard for decades now has been mockingbirds and night-herons.

But Roman has learned to love his night world, to relinquish nostalgia for a new appreciation. The moon is more beautiful than the garish, blinding sun. He can find shapes in the stars with far more precision than he could with any cotton-esque midday cloud. Midnight waters are more soothing than humid summer lakes. He is too old to fight acceptance; this life, whatever life it may be, is his. He values it with a hunger that turns ravenous whenever he is threatened. It is odd, then, that he has aligned himself so precariously. The position could have gone to another, but The Insurgence’s commander had approved of Roman over the other candidates. His peculiar history provided him with a much-needed defense; this new suffering would be no different than the old horror. A younger or less hardened member would not have his resolve.

His resolve. That placid façade and inexhaustible aura of relaxation. Of impersonal indifference. His resolve.

A soul threat.

A cold reckoning.

Dead weight for dead skin.



Harrow does not care for classical music. He says it’s too sentimental. Roman agrees with him, distrusting the provocative element inherent to all instruments, but he finds himself playing the compound’s seldom used piano late in the night, his heavy fingers spreading across the keys swiftly and deftly. The piano had arrived with a shipment of supplies through the desert. It was intended to be broken down and manufactured into something more useful than a mere music box. The ivory is valuable; the steel strings potentially useful. But the movers had forgotten about it, left it pushed against the loading deck, until some advisor assumed it was meant for decoration and moved it inside. Roman found it three weeks ago, and the comfort of playing startles and alerts him.

He is too large of a man to fit correctly behind an old upright. He is too imposing in his silk ties and three-piece suits, better imagined seated in a studded leather armchair than on a bench. But the music rings true – sometimes furious, sometimes muddled by the force of his fingers, sometimes blue with melancholy – but always true.

And it is truth Roman fears and hates most.

Pure, unadulterated, impossible truth.



It is the music that distresses The Insurgence. They see it as a warning sign, a glimpse at the formation of a potential problem. Music risks expressing too much – it carries the hearts and minds of men to uncertain avenues. There are eyes inside the compound, watchers he did not know of. He is not surprised or angered, but he does not listen when they implore him to stop. Midnight sonatas? It does not look good.

He lets it look worse.

He suggests forming a small-scale symphony group for entertainment and maintaining moral after the Sunday devotionals. A spiritual cleansing through sound. Harrow listens to Roman’s explanations for half an hour before he interrupts, reminding the German of the compound’s purpose and intent. Besides, Harrow explains, music will only distract the weak-minded and lure them towards subterfuge.

He seems suspicious by the other’s interest in something so trivial; he veils it thinly.

Roman tells him that he has his proclivities as, motioning to the gilded swan girl beside his arm, Harrow has his. Harrow is not amused, and he silences Roman’s attempts of persuasion with a firmness that Roman knows not to ignore. He flashes his eyes to the valuable, ornamental shifter left to cater to Harrow’s cruelty and feels a tinge of pity.

The Insurgence contacts him again. Two years is a long time, they rationalize. A long time to be someone else, to feel threatened, to perform. They do not judge his actions or behavior. They respect his commitment. They knew he was the best option for the position. He must be in need of someone to trust – a partner, perhaps – and, more importantly, a reliable donor.

The letter is written in code; he can decipher it automatically, like switching between German and English – he has received many letters before this one. Still, he stares at the word donor for a few minutes. He lets the promise and implication settle from his brain on to his tongue, feels his fangs descend with a fierceness and ache that surprises him. It makes him laugh.

Perhaps he is hungry and has only remembered just now.



He isn’t sure if his enjoyment from playing music correlates with his hunger, but he keeps playing anyway.

Halfway through Beethoven’s Pathetique in F Minor, Roman acknowledges the presence of someone else. He can see the woman from his periphery vision, the razor cut of her hair, the sharp line of her body. He smelled her when she first arrived, as silent as the shadows, a husk of a scent. She smells like cold blood. It doesn’t appetize him.

“Kim,” he says, his voice joining the cadence that his fingers continue. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“How did you learn to play? Most have not seen a piano in many years, but you must have played for some time … you’re playing all those pieces by memory, aren’t you?”

“Pieces? Mere tinkering. I’m no Frederic Chopin.”

“Who?” The cut of her smile makes the shape of a trap.

Roman lifts his hands and the silence settles in the air, thicker than the echo of dying notes. He turns, his smile friendly, the muscles of his body relaxed. She watches him with reserved interest – she has been doing that for some time now. He can feel her gaze on him when she arrives with Harrow, as she is prone to do, in the punishing yard. She looks at him as though she would strip him bare, flay his skin and inspect how his innards work. It is not such an unkind look. He has seen it on the faces of many men before. She, like him, is taking advantage of a certain position during a specific time.

Survival of the fittest.

Some people are naturals.

He gazes back at her, openly, taunting her. Even her usefulness with a whip could not open him long. He would not scar for her, and maybe, he thinks, that’s what Kim is looking for. Restitution for the suffering she must force onto others.

He knows she can smell him, the lack of him, his peculiar absence. She hasn’t been the first to notice it.

“You look …”

“Handsome? Charming? Overly confident?” He offers.

“Old.”

Roman barks a laugh, placing a hand over his heart as though she has deeply wounded him. “I blame this atrocious lighting, not my face.” Inwardly, he feels himself snarl, hears a battering of drums.

To his surprise, she laughs. It sounds like a supplication or an apology; he can’t tell which.

He moves to his left and motions to the keys. “Would you like to learn?”

The offer is too personal. He watches the small flicker of her expression, the metal veil that returns to cover her mouth, the depth of her eyes, and ultimately straightens her already iron posture. She turns abruptly, the barest hint of a decline evident in the way she almost shakes her head, and walks away.



The Insurgence contacts him with a name and a position. A new bodyguard will be arriving and this will be his charge. Partner. Blood bag. He tries to still his distrust and underlining current of annoyance – he thinks the commanders merely want another set of eyes on him and, more than that, it has been too long since he’s formed a genuine bond with anyone. Bonds are synonymous with chains and vulnerability.

He is expecting a man or some woman that smells of bear sweat and speaks in growling tones. A hulking, looming figure that articulates with monosyllabic grunts. All muscle and tough veins.

Another caravan arrives from across the desert with shipments, and Harrow requires his presence.

“Why?” Roman shrugs into his jacket, making a fuss about the late hour.

“You are an advisor, are you not?”

“Much good it does you. You hardly listen.”

Harrow grins his predatory grin and claps Roman on the shoulder, but he hardly looks at the other man once they approach the loading dock. He is too busy appreciating a powdery-faced woman and making comments about the trustworthiness of bestial guards. Their small brains make rioting practically impossible. No discipline, you see. No personal motivation that a whip can’t break.

Roman leans against the wall, unbothered by the words or the tickle of his hair falling loose from its short ponytail. He melds into the surroundings, but the scent of something different, something new, catches his attention. Below the heat smell of desert sand and above the scent of animals. Peppery. Blossom colored. Wet.

He glances at the new guards, the workers unloading the caravan, and still cannot pinpoint the owner. At another time the idea of a hunt would have interested him. Secrets and surprises here, however, are always perceived as hostile.

There’s a woman with a vacant expression on her face. Her arms are taut from unpacking. Roman writes her off for the nasal cry of a clarinet when she is really a cello.

A composition on the nature of daylight.