[June 18] [Princess Tutu] Melodies

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

Title: Melodies
Day/Theme: June 18: Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision
Series: Princess Tutu
Character/Pairing: Autor/Pique Yes, I know, very cracky.
Rating: G



As soon as Autor got home he sat down at his piano and began to play. He played a song that was a tug-of-war, first in a minor key then in a major key and alternating in speeds. There were butchered works of major composers like Mendelssohn and Liszt mixed in with his own randomly improvised phrases, a jumbled clutter of notes that sounded both familiar and foreign.
(I’ve never been good at improvising, he thought to himself bitterly as his fingers raced along the keys. Is that my fate then? To study the works of others but never create my own art?)

“Writing is everything, Autor. This is the key to it all, the reason behind your name, the very reason to your existence.”

His hands crashed down loudly on the keyboard, but soon softened to a quiet tone, at first uneasy but slowly being led to a melody that was soft-spoken but firm and organized. The time was so perfect you could set a clock to it. He felt lulled by the melody and followed it along to where it pleased. Still, the melody made him uneasy—something told him he couldn’t follow it forever, even if he wished to.
He forced himself to move on, playing the next piece that came to mind, the melody of a piece by Beethoven.

“I want the power to protect people. That’s all.”

The melody became slow and pensive. His mind reminded him (without permission) of when he went backwards in the story. That promise he made…
It was a silly promise, really. What good is making others happy if you can’t even keep yourself happy? Why should he care? Why should I?

It was funny how that answer didn’t really satisfy him…

“You love me? …Enough to sacrifice your life?”

He played a bit of Mussorgsky’s The Great Gate of Kiev then—he wasn’t sure why, it just seemed to fit. A part of him wanted to linger there and for a moment he did—but soon he was pulled along to another melody. (That was for the best, he supposed—he was never meant to linger there, or perhaps, be there in the first place.)

“You’re so cold!”

This melody was entirely his own. (He didn’t like it. He was never good at improvising.) Each hand played a different melody. The left’s was clumsy and circular. He didn’t like it, it felt too focused on keeping that one part going round and round. The right’s was graceful and bold. This melody, he thought, was pretty—but it didn’t really fit with the melody of the left’s.
There were times when it seemed the melodies fit perfectly together and had been written for one another, but other times the melodies clashed so much it seemed like only a fool would think they belonged together. There were times when the left’s melody seemed to get bored with the right’s and decided to do what it wanted.
Regardless, when they did work together…the song could maybe work. If he could fit the melodies together somehow…
Of course, they were only two pieces of the puzzle.

“What’s it about?”
Autor jumped and pulled his hands back from the keys, then turned towards the voice. Pique was standing next to the piano and leaning forward, scrunching up her forehead and staring at it as if it would reveal its magic secrets to anyone who could not blink within a certain amount of time. (She should know it’s just practice, Autor thought to himself as he rolled his eyes. Music and dancing aren’t different in that sense. Both take practice.)

“What makes you think it’s about anything?” Autor said with a sigh.
“Just a guess.” She shrugged.
He ran his fingers along the keys and thought for a moment. He wasn’t even sure what it was about, but she was right—it was about something, he knew. “I was mostly just thinking about different things.” He leaned back and put his hands on the bench to support himself.
“Like what?”
“…What I want to do.” He glanced over at Pique and saw her looking at him with a questioning look. He adjusted his glasses as he began to explain. “Fakir offered to teach me how to write.”
“Well…that’s good, isn’t it?” Pique said. She sat down on the piano bench next to him and frowned at the piano keys for a moment before looking at him. “I mean, that’s what you’ve been wanting to do for a while.”
“Honestly? I don’t really know if that’s what I wanted to do. Part of me thinks I did—still do—but part of me is…”
She waved a hand. “Part of you is what?”
“Afraid of it.”
“Of writing?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other for a moment, both very grim…until Pique couldn’t help it and burst out laughing. “Autor, what has writing ever done?”
“Words are more powerful than you think, Pique.”
“What do you mean?”

There were two options here: try to explain the entire thing and risk being thought of as insane, or put off telling her until later.

The latter sounded like a good option.

“I’ll explain it later. The point is…” He hesitated. He was pretty sure there was no phrase he hated more in the world than what he was about to say. “The point is, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”
“Well…” she crossed her arms and shrugged. “You don’t have to decide right away, you know. Just…figure out what you know you do want…or don’t want…and go from there. …Does that make sense?”
“I suppose.”

He paused, and then played part of the melodies he had been playing towards the end. He wondered if he could ever find a way to get those melodies to combine…
“I think I know what the last part was about.”
“Oh?”
“Part of what I want for the future. And a story. About an unacknowledged, confused musician and a girl that can’t keep her mouth shut.”
“Hey!” Pique narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “How come the guy sounds sympathetic and the girl sounds like an annoyance?”
“That’s how the story goes.”
“I think it’s a story about a snobby jerk and a daydreaming girl with a bright future in ballet.”
Autor smirked and pushed up his glasses. “You were listening to the wrong song, then. The boy isn’t a snob.”
“He looks like one when he pushes his glasses up like that.”
“I do not! A-And you look like an idiot when you do that weird thing with your tongue!”
“Hey! I do that when I’m thinking!”
“Well, it’s the same thing with my glasses!”

Autor tapped his foot on the floor with an agitated frown. He did not look like a snob, he knew that for sure. He looked sophisticated.
Pique sighed again and poked at a few of the keys she thought Autor might have been playing. “How does it end?”
“The story? ..I don’t know that either. But I do know how I want it to end.”
“How?”
He smiled. “Forgive the pun—on a good note.”
“That was horrible.”
“I thought it was clever.”
“It wasn’t.” She looked away and poked at one or two more keys. “Alright, then. Let’s try it.”
“Try what?”
“To finish our story and find the ending.”
“…You mean it?”
“I mean it. Do you?”
“With all of my heart.”
She laughed. “Don’t. That sounds flowery. And stop tilting your head like that, you’ll get a crick in your neck.”

Autor shook his head and made a show of rolling his eyes, but he couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t really know how this story was going to end, or what he was going to end up doing. But…

Maybe not knowing everything wasn’t so bad.