STABBED THROUGH THE HEART

[nikkernoodle]

[It's late Thursday night, and the school is far darker than normal. The Band Room is now lit by candle light; far dimmer than electricity, but something that Salieri is fairly used to.

He's there now, seated at the piano, a candle resting in a dish on the edge of the lid as he works, plunking out chords and tinkering with melody and harmony, making notes on the paper, going back, trying again.]

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[violentenvies]

[there's a tremble in his hands, now, and Salieri feels as though he can hear his heart pounding in his ears as it tries to escape his chest.

Living in Court, Salieri had long ago learned to guard any emotion using careful control. After all, anything he said, or did, or felt could be used against him; turned into his undoing. Love, especially, was an emotion often only wielded by those young and naive or wise to the ways in which it could become a knife with which to stab another person in the back. Salieri had guarded his heart especially during that time; done his best to repress it to a point that, when his heart stirred with emotion so strong that he was no longer able to suppress said emotions, they began to tear him apart, to push him to madness.

And then he was brought here, initially wiped clean of his conflicting emotions, surrounded by those who were kind, and steady, and sure--people that gave their love and support freely; people who had been lonely, guarded, like him and were learning to trust as much as he was; people who called him friend, confidant, father. To not only be given their trust and love so freely, but also to be allowed to display his own through words, gestures, actions without fear of rancor or suspicion has been a gift all its own, and a freeing one.

Then, there's Discord. Discord, whom he despised (loathing, unadulterated loathing,) then found a strange kinship with through their shared love of barbed and pointed insults (Ding-dong! The SQUIP is dead-,) allowing him the space to express the most terrible of his emotions and thoughts without wondering what the others would think of him. And now this: affection grown through understanding, through seeing the purpose to his actions, the softness beneath the barbs. The affection Discord holds for so many here, especially the children--it was something of the final nail in Salieri's metaphorical coffin. He's in love. He has been, for a while, unacknowledged until Maya dragged it out of him; mostly unspoken and unaddressed until Farrah and Spongebob prodded him into action. Now, to hear this from Discord himself that he's loved in return, in the same way...it's wonderful and terrible and makes him feel both elated and devastated all at once.

It's simply not fair. This shouldn't have to be a choice he has to make: to be trapped in this catch-22, where they die if he does and they die if he doesn't. Where the only option left is this small, wild chance that maybe, together, he and Discord can save their family. So they must take it. There are no other viable options. Salieri thinks of them one after another--his children, his friends, his family; thinks to himself, as if he could somehow reach them this way:

"Mes amis, ma famille...thank you. And I'm sorry."
He hopes they'll hear it, somehow. That his love, his regret, his resolve will reach them; that maybe they'll forgive him for this.]