Chapter Text
Fingers glide through his hair. Their touch is soft, caring—almost concerned. Klavier’s heart is racing. He does not know, for a moment, where he is, or when it is. Kristoph is there, looking down at him. Kristoph, wrapped in a black cloak, now swung lazily over one shoulder, revealing the neat attire Klavier would have expected of him: Black waistcoat, ribbon tied at his throat. His hair spills down one shoulder, just as Klavier’s does now, a style he had adopted in imitation of his brother, who was once so honored in the world of performing.
For a moment, Klavier watches Kristoph watch him, both of them silent, Kristoph’s fingers still brushing through Klavier’s hair, occasionally offering him a gentle, encouraging smile.
Klavier knows he will have to be the first to speak, and yet it is hard for him to break the silence, the peace of the stillness. Dimly, he’s aware that this is strange. That they are in the basement of his family’s opera house, where he now works. That his brother, believed dead for ten years, is alive, and here—in the very place where Klavier and the rest of their family had left him all these all those years ago.
“Kristoph,” Klavier says. It seems to be all he can say, but it’s enough that it has broken the silence. Kristoph’s smile widens now, reaching his eyes.
“Ah, there you are. I thought perhaps between the shock and the sleeping draft and the reminder of all things passed yesterday, and the false accusation…my you have been through a lot, these last days, haven’t you?”
“Kristoph,” Klavier says, again, then, finally, he asks what he wants to know. “How are you here?”
“I should imagine that I arrived in much the same fashion as you did, Klavier. Although, I daresay, with far less fanfare, and through the basement entrance. After all, no one awaited me. My time on the stage is over.”
Klavier flinches, unable to hear the words as anything other than an accusation.
“Kristoph. We looked for you. All those years ago. And yet, here you are, whole and uninjured.”
Kristoph laughs. It is a dark, brutal sound, one that Klavier cannot recall ever hearing from his lips before. Not from Kristoph, not his perfect, beautiful brother. But there is a new dimension to him now—or at least, something Klavier had not been able to see before.
Klavier is five. Every morning, he joins his brother’s music lesson to watch him sing and play. One day, Klavier will sing and play just as well as Kristoph. One day, he will be just like him.
In the evenings, Klavier has his own lessons: Their parents have instructed Kristoph to teach him.
It’s good, they tell Klavier, that he wants to be just like Kristoph. It’s good, they tell him, that Kristoph is so kind, so willing to help him.
Klavier is ten. He sings and plays almost as well as Kristoph had when he was his age. And this is good, because their family has just moved into the city and directed their own theater—an opera house. And for two years now, every night, Kristoph takes the stage. His voice is so beautiful that it’s never described as merely angelic, as merely like that of an angel. No, Kristoph’s talent is so prodigious that he’s called an angel himself, for who else could sing like that? Who else could radiate light itself while reaching such enchanting, celestial notes? And that at only sixteen?
Klavier is twelve. He treasures his lessons with Kristoph more than any other part of his day. Kristoph, who could earn more than enough to leave and build his own manor, now chooses to spend an hour of his day training Klavier so that one day, he will be just as good as him.
Klavier loves his brother. He wants nothing more than to please him. He watches every show, hoping to learn, and each of them leaves him filled with nothing but praise and admiration.
Each of them, until the one when everything crumbles around them and goes up in flames.
“Kristoph?” Kristoph seems almost to awaken, as if the laugh, so alien from his throat, had in fact emanated from somewhere else, out of another being, perhaps, in temporary possession of his body. His eyes lock with Klavier’s.
He pulls back his sleeve, revealing an ugly, devil-like scar on the back of his hand. Klavier gasps, unable to forget the harsh sound that had emanated from his brother’s throat seconds before, as if it might have been this devil who had laughed. Kristoph then reaches up, and pushes his hair away from his ears, revealing old but glistening scars on his ears and neck. Klavier gasps.
“Hardly whole and uninjured, wouldn’t you say?”
Klavier reaches for his hand, runs his fingers over the scar, the train-track stitches like a mouth sewn shut. An involuntary whimper escapes his throat as he sits up. Kristoph seems to take pity on him in that moment and gives his hand a squeeze and a pat before letting go of him.
“There is so much that you never knew. That you never understood. But Klavier, you mustn’t blame yourself. I know that you loved me, that you would have tried to help if you understood. That’s exactly why I never told you.”
“Kristoph…?”
“Do you still love me, Klavier? Would you still listen, and be willing to help me, now that you’re old enough to understand?”
Klavier’s voice catches in his throat. He is still in awe of his brother. For all the unease and discomfort he feels now, he can’t deny it. When Kristoph touches him, when he speaks to him, he can’t help but feel himself malleable, compliant. And now, because Kristoph wills it, there is nothing he can do now besides nod and wait.
But Kristoph seems pleased enough with this response.