aviary | OPEN | prompt nine

[ The most obvious lesson is the one Piano never learns: you should fear a man like Perahia. What little good there is in him is too easily tamped down and smothered by the rest. He rants, he rages; he's jealous and petty. He wants and he takes and then feels anger at the guilt that follows, disgust for himself and for his own weakness, resentment for her (so much greater, made so ignoble by something so simple as his presence).

As bad as things are, they get worse after Colorado, after he fucks her in a motel room with Jesus Christ hanging crucified on the wall above the bed. Then again in Kansas. Nebraska. South Dakota. He fucks her and sometimes she fucks him and the only place they've got left to go is down down down.

Her cheek is swollen, gauze pouched between teeth and tongue, copper filling the inside of her mouth as she tries not to swallow too much of her own blood. Perahia's never kind, but he's growing wreckless, worse than a chinashop bull. The last time he hit Piano she nearly bit off the tip of her tongue and even though there was no need for stitches, she hasn't spoken a word in days.

Slowly she blinks, her eyelids heavy. He loads her up on painkillers to try to make the drive bearable, all of the jostling of the car making her teeth chatter and her tongue ache inside her mouth. ]

[ (The last time he hit Piano, he'd felt a sick sort of satisfaction, one that had magnified his guilt after the fact by leaps and bounds. No matter what he does to hurt her, she'll never strike back, never use the retribution that he knows sits within the depths of her frame. She'll still love him. In that way, he thinks, maybe he could have power. But it's a twisted line of thought, and he knows will send him further down than he's already meant to go.

The first time he'd fucked her, there hadn't been any connection in the act to love. He'd wanted her, plain and simple, and she'd asked for it, hadn't she? The second time, and the time after that, things get more complicated. Sometimes it's still just about the pleasure, but there's guilt there, too — desperation to forget, need for salvation, as if he could find true, pure bliss buried inside a sixteen year old girl.)

She hasn't spoken in days, and the silence is somewhat jarring. It's the first time she's been quiet for so long. His hackles already seem to be raised when he finally speaks. ]

Your tongue still hurt?

[ She still makes noises from time to time. It's not speaking, not by any stretch of the word, oftentimes simply sound disconnected from any kind of thought, not meant as communication to the outside world, but internalized, inward facing. A reminder of sorts. (This is me and I am here and this is me breathing, this sound is my breath.) It makes for a stark contrast against what she'd been like before the incident — how she'd laugh and she'd tease, even when he didn't feel like humoring her. She would poke and prod and then giggle behind her hand, as if somehow all of Perahia's anger was some kind of elaborate, overdrawn joke. (It's been ten days since Piano last laughed; four since her last spoken word. For the first time ever she's withdrawn, inside herself, and it's not clear if she sick, if she's unhappy, or if she's just steeling herself to strike him down.)

Piano nods dumbly but doesn't make a sound. When she's at her most cogent and clear-eyed she sometimes thinks that Perahia might actually like her better this way, silent and still and drawn into her own corner. But no, then she realizes that nothing will make Perahia like her better. Nothing will make him like her, period. (She never says it, but she thinks it, then makes herself forget after.) ]

[ Here's a truth, one that makes their current circumstances all the worse: he could have loved her, once upon a time. In a good way, in the sort of everybody gets out of this happy way. But it's much too late for him, now. (It never is, never was, for her. Her heart is too big.) Perhaps there'd been a specific turning point, one at which there's no saving you had stamped itself clearly across his heart. Maybe there'd been a period, a window of time in which it had happened.

Whatever it was, whichever it was, it's too late, by a hair or by a huge divide.

He can't love her (not in the way she deserves) because he doesn't even know how to love himself. ]

Think you can say something?

[ It's a foolish hope she holds onto — the thought that Perahia can somehow be redeemed, can perhaps be made less ugly so long as enough love is poured into him, sloughing off that self-hatred to reveal something burnished and bright and good underneath. It's a dangerous hope, too; more dangerous than it s foolish. Because even though Piano's just a girl (only newly sixteen) and should be allowed these kinds of indulgences, Perahia's ugliness doesn't just offend, it bruises and bleeds. It rends things apart limb from limb.

It doesn't break hearts; it shreds them.

Theirs is the worst kind of equation, one whose only setting is a perpetual case of diminishing returns. The more hope she has in him, the less hope she has for herself, and everyone, everyone is doomed doomed doomed to an unhappy and bloodied end.

He can't love her (not in the way she deserves) because he doesn't even know how to love himself. Still, she clings to him; still, she follows.

Of the innumerable words in the english language, of all the myriad things she could possibly try to say, there is only one word at the very tip of Piano's savaged tongue. It's difficult to form and pain etches lines into her expression but she spits it out eventually, a big bloody marble of sound. ]

Puh— P-Perahia.

[ For all that he hates, for all that he festers and burns, there is a terrible kind of beauty to the music that Perahia creates. It is he, after all, who brings forth the most tragic notes from his instrument, the song of love left unreturned, of love unwavering despite the worst storms. (And how even his own heart aches.) It's a song terrible and beautiful enough to eventually form the crux of the entire piece, and then, later on, to bring it to a bloody end.

He can't love her. Sometimes he wishes he could.

She says his name (one word out of billions, and she chooses his name) and he can't quite bring himself to look at her, his lips twisting as his knuckles whiten around the steering wheel. ]

Okay [ he says.

Not shut up, not say something else.

Okay. ]

Good.

[ Good, Perahia tells her and it's terrible — it's absolutely heartbreaking — the tentative smile that blossoms (small but hopeful) across the bruised ruin of Piano's face. T

hat's all she ever needs from him at the end of the day, the slightest suggestion of encouragement finding its way into her heart by way of a kind word (literally, just the one) or an unraised hand (an unthrown fist). The saying goes that beggars cannot be choosers and beggar is such a harsh word for a girl who can literally destroy a man with little more than a flicker of her lashes, but hers is a Grace meant for the wide world but him. (He is love, he is spared and he deserves none of it. Not a single strange of loyalty and yet she provides, provides until it kills her.)

A small white hand reaches across the space between then and curls into the gather of sleeve collected at his elbow. Again, she says his name. ]

P-Puh— Pera-Perahia.

[ He feels her hand tug at his sleeve and he doesn't shake her off, just looks over at her with his mouth still drawn in a crooked line, as if he wasn't sure what expression he ought to be wearing (a smile, in a pinch; a smile, if that's what she wants to see). He looks at her a long time, though not long enough to drift out of the lane as he drives. ]

Yeah. [ His voice is strained — in happiness or in bitterness? ] That's right.

[ It's a relief, at least, that she says anything at all. It's a sign that things are alright, though whether that bodes better or worse for her has yet to be seen. (He'll try to draw more out of her later that night, mouth trailing a path down the length of her body, down flesh he's beaten black and blue before.)

He speaks up again before she can try for a third repetition, casting another glance in her direction. ]

Careful y' don't tear the knit open again.

[ 'Alright' is an extremely relative term when it comes to creatures like Perahia and Piano. Their everyday is a twisted up tangle of knots — bloodied and bludgeoned, both inside and out. As much damage as Perahia can do to those who are meant to be purged (those who make him angry, who simply are in the wrong place at the wrong time), he can do so much worse to the girl he's meant to keep safe. (She's slight and skinny with scrawny arms and small breasts; she bruises easy, she bends but she breaks too; she loves him, she needs him.

For her, it's so much worse.)

The noise she makes next doesn't use her tongue, just pushes air through her throat in order to hiccup out a soft whimper of obedience. (He'll win more sounds later, pinched and keening, her lips pressed together to keep the blood in as he decides to kiss her everywhere except from mouth-to-mouth.)

The hand on his sleeve trails up, fingers pressing against the crooked corner of her mouth. It's the first time in days that she's touched him, that she's even acknowledged his presence at all. (So yes, in certain respects, they're 'alright'.) Another noise, questioning now.

(Are you still angry with me? Was I bad?) ]

[ For her, it's the worst, because he'll never kill her, not with his own two hands. He'll break her, over and over again, stretch the limitations of her love just to find that there are none, but he'll never let her go. Even in death, his handprint will remain there upon her heart. It'll bring her right down with them, when the time comes. And heaven knows (what a joke) she never deserved that.

He doesn't move toward or away from her touch, though the muscles of his jaw shift under her fingertips. ]

Don't y' worry, [ is what he says, a mile or so later down the road. ] We've only got half an hour or so 'til we stop for the night.

OPEN | prompt nine | ROAD TRIP

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject