Chapter 1: Divisi
Chapter Text
This fic is a part of the 2021 Bumbleby Big Bang, and was created in partnership with the amazing artists Irusu and 6iirls. Please visit their Tumblrs (linked below) to see the wonderful art they created for this collaboration!
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Caesura, n: (in music) a pause or break in a musical line outside of the time signature of the composition.
Divisi, adj.: Notes are divided between multiple musicians— the opposite of unisono (unison)
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Blake wasn’t in pain— on the contrary, she felt swathed in smothering clouds, weighing down her limbs and disconnecting her from reality. She thought that she probably should feel something, anything, but her mind was on a slightly different plane of existence from the rest of her body. She tried to focus on her surroundings, making out bright white light from windows that were close and yet impossibly far away, machines that beeped and whirred in disorienting syncopation, and the drawn, pale face of her manager, Winter Schnee.
When she spoke it came out as a dry, strained rasp. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“Where’s Yang? And… why does my body feel dumb?” The weakness in her voice sent a needle of panic sliding down her spine.
Winter was not a jolly person by nature— not so much resting bitch face as resting fuck you face— but now she looked like she’d been involuntarily reanimated and it was everyone’s problem. Despite her obvious exhaustion, Winter attempted a reassuring smile. This was made slightly less reassuring by the fact that Winter never, ever smiled. Something was very wrong.
Well, obviously something was wrong. Blake wouldn’t be in a… hospital? She was pretty sure she was in a hospital… if everything was fine. She poked at her lethargic brain, trying to force some recollection past the barriers of medication and grey stupefaction. They had been on the second to last stop of the tour, Seattle.
“Don’t push yourself kid. You’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“D-days? What happened?”
If asked previously, Blake would have sworn up and down that it would be impossible for her manager to look any more emotionally constipated than she already did on a regular basis. She would have been wrong. Steely anger burned in Winter’s slate-blue eyes and her face pinching in on itself as she struggled to regulate her emotions. She took a sip from a paper cup, not meeting Blake’s gaze.
“Adam.”
Cold panic snapped through Blake like a stone breaking the surface of an icy lake.
A gun, there had been a gun. Behind the theater, the orange halogen streetlights illuminating the alley in a nightmare scene. Just Blake and Adam staring her down over the barrel of some kind of massive handgun. It was comically large in his elegant musician’s hands, making the whole situation seem even more absurd.
The stage door opened behind her and she twisted to shout a warning right as the gunshot rang out, pain ripping through her abdomen like a bolt of lightning. And then, fuckshitdamn, Yang was running down the alley towards Adam, yelling something Blake couldn’t make out over the roaring in her ears. More gunshots.
The beeping of the machines took on a more urgent sound and Blake realized she was hyperventilating. A nurse burst in through the door, throwing Winter an accusatory look as he rushed to Blake’s bedside.
“Hey Blake, I’m so glad you’re awake. I know this is scary, I just need you to breathe for me. Are you in pain?”
Blake shook her head in response, but the sound of echoing gunshots kept playing through her ears. Not aimed for her. Aimed for Yang.
“Blake, you need to listen to the nurses, okay?” Winter’s voice cut through her terror— in the short time Winter had been her manager, Blake had very quickly come to recognize the tone that would tolerate no bullshit. “Yang is alive. She’s here in the hospital too. You freaking out right now is not going to help her, and it’s not going to help you. Get yourself under control.”
“Miss Schnee, I understand you are the only person here for Blake right now, but I would really appreciate it if you went out into the hallway for a little while.” Damn, the nurse was even better at the no-bullshit tone than Winter was. Blake had the vaguest impression of a strong hand grasping her ankle through the layers of numbness and bedsheets that cushioned her, then Winter disappeared out the door.
A straw was being brought to her lips and Blake sipped obediently, shocked by how delicious the ice water tasted and felt on her leaden tongue. She was exhausted, her bones felt watery with single-minded relief. Yang was alive, and Blake was alive, and Adam was… who knew. Fuck him. The nurse’s kind hands soothed her down into her bed and she had half a moment of realization and outrage that he had probably slipped something into her IV before her vision tunneled black and unconsciousness took her again.
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A large caliber gunshot wound to the abdomen could have been a lot worse, she learned, but it also could have been a lot better. The first day after she woke up Blake was in and out of a drugged stupor. The nursing staff seemed like they didn’t trust Blake not to go racing down the hallway with her ass hanging out of her gown, trailing IV lines like streamers, if she was given the smallest window of opportunity. From what she could glean from passing comments made during her wakeful hours, when she’d been brought in they had had to sedate her heavily because she kept trying to climb over the emergency staff to get to Yang.
Cody, the day-shift nurse, filled Blake in a bit more on the details of her injury and the twelve frantic hours that followed as they worked to stop the internal bleeding and prevent sepsis from setting in. The bullet had torn a ragged hole through her large intestine and ripped open her left kidney before exiting two inches from her spine. Cody slipped Blake extra raspberry jello and handled her questions with cheerful honesty. He and Winter came to a kind of truce that seemed to involve Winter upsetting Blake as little as possible and Cody not making her sit out in the hallway. He even found a recliner for the stoic blonde to doze in.
Wakefulness had heralded the unwelcome return of Blake’s memories of the night, the attack. They came as patchwork nightmares, not chronological, sprinting into her mind’s eye with little to no warning or provocation. The raspberry jello on her lunch tray became blood spewing across filthy pavement, a door slamming in the hall was the stage door clanging shut behind her, the muted TV hanging on the wall portrayed the surreal slow-motion movement of Yang’s body past Blake and Adam’s mask of rage as he turned the weapon on the blonde.
The police caught up with Adam on the third day, as he was trying to cross the border into Canada. It had given Blake no small crumb of joy to think of Adam being detained by Mounties until the FBI came to collect him. This also meant that the police officer who had been stationed outside of her door could go and look bored somewhere else. Once Blake had been aware enough to recognize the officer’s presence, she had also recognized the irritation that came from what they considered glorified babysitting.
Winter filled Blake in on what she knew of the details over what was probably her manager’s sixth horrible hospital coffee of the day. It seemed that Winter took it as a personal affront that her client had been attacked under her supervision, and she carried that anger and guilt in the stubborn set of her elegant jaw and the dark circles of sleeplessness that stood out against her ivory skin.
“Your parents will be landing at six thirty. I’ve arranged for a car to pick them up at the airport, and they have a hotel on Capitol Hill.” Winter picked at the rim of her paper cup, jerky movements betraying her nerves even if her voice held steady. “Now that you’re awake and on less pain killers, the police will want to talk to you. I held them off as long as I could— but since they have that bastard in custody, they need to start building up the case for the state prosecutor.”
“I’ll tell them what I can. It’s all a mess in here right now.” Rubbing at the side of her head, Blake grimaced at the greasy texture of her unwashed hair. “Uhm, about my parents…”
“You didn’t leave on good terms, they never approved of Adam as your manager or your boyfriend, you haven’t seen them in five years.” Winter met Blake’s surprised look with a sardonic tilt of her lips. “It’s my job to know you Blake. And since you aren’t the most forthcoming when it comes to sharing personal details, I had to do the digging on my own. I apologize if you feel that your privacy was invaded, and I can assure you that no one other than myself and, to an extent, my sister, knows anything about your checkered past.”
Of course she had talked with Weiss about it— Weiss was the one who had recommended that Winter pick up the management of Blake’s career when she finally was able to fire Adam. Weiss, who had stepped out of a crowd of onlookers and stood silently beside Blake when Adam broke the restraining order the first time, who didn’t know Blake as anything more than a second chair cellist but still had her back. And Weiss who worked with Winter to arrange the tour with Yang. Weiss deserved to know.
Blake huddled down in her blankets, feeling very small and vulnerable. She would deal with her parents when she had to, just like the police detectives. For now, she returned to the common refrain of the last three days. “When can I see Yang?”
Winter’s brows furrowed even more than they had previously and she suddenly wouldn’t meet Blake’s gaze. “I really don’t know. I’ve found out what I can— her dad and her sister are here with her now. She’s had some surgeries…”
“ Surgeries ? Multiple?”
Still not meeting her gaze, Winter sipped at the dregs of her cold coffee. “She took several gunshot wounds to her right forearm and elbow. Crazy kid was trying to disarm Adam barehanded, she was lucky—“ Catching a look at Blake’s face, frozen in terror, she coughed and rethought her phrasing. “Well, she was damn lucky. Fucker ran after he hit both of you, the sound of the shouts and your screaming brought a crowd pretty quickly.”
Blake lost track of what Winter was saying, falling into the white pit of her own mind. Yang’s right arm. An image of the last performance they had played together flickered through her mind’s eye, Yang glowing like a golden beacon of hope as they sailed through the arching refrains of Korsakoff. Yang held her violin lightly beneath her chin, fingertips sliding and flicking over frets as she swayed in the sheer joy of the music. Playing with Yang felt like flying and falling at the same time— the audience and the orchestra behind them disappeared and it was only the two of them in an entire world of their own fabrication.
That magic, destroyed because Blake’s ex couldn’t take no for an answer, couldn’t live in a world where Blake didn’t belong to him.
She curled in on herself, as much as her stitched and bandaged abdomen would allow. Blake was a good cellist, technically brilliant and expressive with a flair for the dramatic. But Yang was so much more than that— a once in a lifetime prodigy who played with a strength of emotion that brought even the harshest critics to their knees.
Yang Xiao Long was the headliner of the tour, with Blake Belladonna as an interesting accompaniment. It was thanks to Blake’s shrewd new manager, the respect of Weiss Schnee, and a few well written reviews out of Europe and the UK that the tour even took place.
Yang played a Guarneri, on loan from a private collection. Yang appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, a black and white photo lending drama to her mischievous grin and the strength of her hands on the neck of her violin. NPR credited Yang as the artist who was “making Paganini cool again”.
And Yang had brought Blake along for the ride. She was friendly and encouraging, treating Blake as an equal rather than the eccentric second string she might have been with any other big name soloist. From the moment Yang shook her hand Blake had felt a strange sort of magnetism with the enthusiastic blonde.
After tour stops in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, Blake felt like she’d known Yang her entire life. Evenings spent lying on the floors of four star hotel rooms, ordering takeout and drinking way too much corner store champagne, flying city to city and barely catching their breaths before they were walking on stage in another concert hall and meeting another conductor and orchestra— it bonded the two young women together in a way neither of them had expected.
Gramophone reported on the concert tour, headlining with a photo of Blake and Yang leaving the Louis M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco hand in hand, Yang beaming back at Blake as the brunette said something in a sardonic undertone for only her companion’s ears. The picture was soon bouncing around Twitter (and the backend of Tumblr, according to Yang), with Yang’s fans theorizing about their relationship. It wasn’t a secret that Yang was bi, just as it was common knowledge that Blake had fired Adam as her manager when she had finally broken up with him.
Adam had an undercurrent of support from people who had followed his own early recording career, people who didn’t believe Blake’s allegations of abuse. Yang leaning over her shoulder, reading the poorly-spelled tweets in a terrible British accent and carefully enunciating every ludicrous word, pulled the teeth from the vitriol. The judge who had authorized Blake’s restraining order believed her, Winter believed her, and Yang believed her. It was surprising to realize exactly how much that last fact comforted her.
Yang Xiao Long had supported her. And Yang Xiao Long’s music career might just be over because of it.
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Walking was horrific and Blake was pretty sure Cody lived to torture her. Extensive internal surgery, it turned out, had a significant impact on all of the muscles in the torso that made standing up possible. Her legs shook as she struggled to take her first steps supported by a walker and encouraged by Cody’s cheerful banter. Winter watched from the armchair, her laptop balanced precariously on her knees, amusement tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Blake was grateful her parents weren’t there for the experience. It was embarrassing enough that she had Cody and Winter to witness her wobbling like a baby deer.
Her parents had arrived in Seattle and had come straight to the hospital from the airport. After a second spent hovering in the doorway, Kali swooped forward and enveloped her daughter in a gentle hug. Ghira stood back, complex emotion twisting his brows and setting his mouth in a grim line.
Shame, sorrow, and blinding relief made a heady cocktail that brought tears to Blake’s eyes and gripped her lungs in a tight fist. Burrowing her face into her mother’s shoulder, she heard a muffled “Oh get over here you silly man”, then her father’s strong arms joined her mother’s, encircling her in a safety and warmth she hadn’t known in five years. It was too much. It was nowhere near enough.
“I’m sorry mom.”
“No, I’m sorry sweetheart. There’re so many things— We can talk about it later. I’m just so happy to see you.”
A deep grumble of assent from Ghira echoed Kali’s words. Blake pulled back so that she could see both of her parents, searching their faces for the disapproval, anger, or disappointment that she had dreaded. All she could see was love. It turned her world inside out and put it back again in a slightly different configuration.
They got a hotel near the hospital and visited daily, but they were busy even when they were remote from their jobs. Ghira’s assistant arrived from the Embassy only a day after they had reunited, and he became as much a fixture in Blake’s hospital room as Blake’s parents were. Kali had to stay in touch with the charities she headed, and Blake gathered that she was missing an important gala to be in the United States with her daughter.
It was familiar in a way that was a little disconcerting. Blake felt like she was a teenager again, quietly hoping both of her parents would be able to make it to a recital or her graduation. She knew that they were both doing important work and it had taken a lot for them to drop everything and fly halfway around the world, but she couldn’t help but feel selfish when she wished they would just spend time with her. Even when they shared dinner the night before, attention had been divided between hospital food, halting conversation, and the incessant demands of email and phone calls.
So, moving painfully across the hospital room that had been her entire world for the last week, Blake silently thanked any deity listening that Ghira had a videoconference all day and Kali was on a guided tour of local art museums with the deputy mayor. She was used to looking out for herself, it injected a bit of normalcy into a very abnormal circumstance.
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Blake was exceptionally grateful for her parents' presence, however, when the police showed up to get her statement about the attack. Winter let the detectives into the room, then stood back against the wall with her arms crossed and her expression deadly. Kali, seated at Blake’s bedside while they worked on a crossword together, gave the officers her best meaningless smile while Ghira took the chair on the other side of Blake’s bed. Bookended by their support, Blake felt a bit stronger.
Seeming unfazed by the chilly greeting, the taller detective stepped forward and offered Blake his hand. “Hello Blake, I’m Detective Ebi and this is my partner Detective Bree. It’s good to see you’re looking better. I hear you’re going to be out of here soon?”
Blake shook hands warily. Her last direct experience with the American police was the bored officer who took her statement when she finally left Adam. The experience had made her feel small and unimportant, just another woman complaining to an uncaring authority.
“I’ve got a couple more days…”
Detective Ebi’s clear green eyes and sincere smile seemed miles away from that grey, lonely room. His partner, a small woman with a very serious expression, pulled a notepad and pen out of her pocket and flipped it open. Neither of them seemed uncomfortable about the fact that there were no seats available for them in the room, standing easily without looming.
“Blake, would you please walk me through the night of the attack? Start right after the concert. Anything you can remember, it doesn’t matter how insignificant it might seem.”
So she did. It was easier recounting the story than she thought it would be, the flashes of terror and pain taking on a clinical disconnectedness as she laid them out in order and carefully described each awful second. Detective Ebi asked gentle, probing questions, Detective Bree noting down all of her answers with a crisp economy of movement that spoke to a personal shorthand and familiarity with the horrors of humanity.
After a long pause while Ebi glanced through the pages of writing and Kali squeezed Blake’s hand tightly between two of her own, the Detective turned back to Blake and met her gaze with honest sympathy.
“I have to let you know, this is going to be tried as a hate crime. There is very strong evidence to suggest that Mr. Taurus came after you and Yang because of the perceived relationship between you that had been played up by magazines and the internet. Witnesses heard him say some things… You’ll hear more about it from the District Attorney's office I’m sure, if you didn’t hear them at the time.”
Blake could remember Adam’s mouth moving, but no sounds other than the awful dull roar of the bullets aimed at Yang’s fragile body. She didn’t even remember screaming, though she had been told that she hadn’t stopped until they got her into the ambulance and sedated her.
“I just want you to be prepared. This isn’t going to be an easy trial, though we will do our best to keep you and Yang out of the limelight as much as possible. I’m sure you’re aware that the media is already having a field day with it.”
She wasn’t— Blake shot a look at Winter, who responded with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. Her manager was working overtime, it would seem. There had been no signs of reporters or photographers anywhere near her hospital room either, which was probably also a testament to the protective power of Cody and his fellow nurses of the critical care wing.
“Anyway, you will be informed when it goes to trial. It will likely be several weeks, or even months, before all of the evidence has been assembled. Mr. Taurus has not been offered bail, as he is viewed as a flight risk and a danger to the public. I understand you have an apartment in New York?” Blake nodded, numb. “You can return there if you wish, once you’re released from the hospital. You will need to come back to Seattle as a key witness to the crime. Yang’s gone back to Oregon with her family, but they will be back up here for the trial. I realize that it’s a bit easier to get from Salem to Seattle than from New York City.” His tone was empathetic.
This man had spoken to Yang— of course he had, he was leading up the investigation. Blake wanted to beg him for more details, ask how she was doing, if her arm was healing alright after all of the surgeries, but her tongue was lead in her mouth. She smiled weakly and shook hands again, white noise buzzing in her ears and shutting out anything else that might have been said. Her father walked the two police officers to the door, speaking quietly with them for a moment before they departed.
Blake pulled away from her mother, murmuring something about being tired and pressing her head back into her pillow as if it could block out the relentless tide of grief that lapped at her edges.
There hadn’t been anything between Blake and Yang other than a friendship in its infancy, crushed under the heel of brutal jealousy before it had a chance to grow into anything stronger or more meaningful. She mourned the lost possibility that had hovered between them, even as they laughed at the hypotheses and outrage that their familiarity had generated. It might have been something more, damn it, and now it would never be anything at all.
Her parents said their goodbyes for the evening while Blake drifted in her loathing and self-pity. She didn’t let herself consider the future, the difficulties of media attention, finding work after such a scandal, her complex family dynamic now tentatively repaired with bandaids and words unsaid. There was only so much one person could handle at any given time, and Blake had met her limit.
She told the night shift nurse that her incisions were aching and let the morphine in her IV carry her off to cottony, dreamless sleep.
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Helping a client pack up their one bedroom apartment was so far outside of Winter’s job description that Blake was forced to acknowledge that somehow their relationship had evolved from business into actual friendship. Not that she would mention it to the stoic blonde, who would likely scoff at the idea even as she carefully wrapped Blake’s few knick knacks and framed photos in newspapers.
Aside from some clothes and those scant items of emotional significance, everything in the apartment would be sold or given away. Blake had moved into the space when she had first struck out on her own, and it had been hastily furnished from IKEA and Craigslist. Everything that was really important travelled with her on tour— her cello, her three favorite books, and Kucing, a favorite stuffed toy from childhood that now didn’t resemble a black cat so much as a lumpy, bald bear.
Moving back to London seemed like the most sensible option, once Blake had been discharged from the hospital and deemed healthy enough to make the grueling seven hour flight across the country. Her parents had gone back to Europe as soon as they saw her safely to New York— her father was needed at the Embassy in London and her mother was presenting at a conference on global hunger in Prague. Sad as she was to see them go, it was a relief not to have to pretend that she was alright whenever they were around.
Blake was not alright. As soon as she was out of the hospital, she became aware of the sheer scope of paparazzi nonsense she had been protected from over the weeks she had spent in recovery. It had died down a bit in the intervening time, but the few soggy photographers waiting outside were delighted to snap as many photos of Blake as they could while she was wheeled out to the waiting towncar and loaded inside.
Social media was a war zone. With Winter’s help Blake quickly shut down her Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, setting them to private and turning off DMs. The messages that had come in in the time since Blake was hospitalized ranged from sincere sympathy and “thoughts and prayers” to Yang’s fans accusing Blake of setting her up to get publicity, Adam’s fans claiming she’d led him on and destroyed his life, and the whole cadre of internet trolldom that came with it. The death threats should have been expected, but she slept on the couch in Winter’s townhouse when she first got back to New York all the same.
Yang didn’t text her, and Blake boiled in her own fear and shame. She considered deleting their text thread from her phone, thumb hovering over the last message she had received (a string of emojis culminating in an eggplant, a clown, a tongue, and a water splash), but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She went into her settings and turned off the “auto delete” function. She let the thread get buried under texts from her parents, a few concerned friends from New York and London, Winter.
The trial was a national event— Yang’s popularity, combined with the fact that Blake was the estranged daughter of the Indonesian Ambassador to the UK and the fact that the trial was going before a grand jury made for a sensational story.
“On the bright side, your albums are selling better than ever. There’s a push from Boosey and Hawkes to do a retrospective.” Blake gaped at her manager. “I got approached the other day about a biography—“
“Biography??!! Winter, I’m only 23!”
The other woman snorted. “Don’t worry, I laughed in their faces. But at this rate you’ll be on Dancing with the Stars in five years, so…”
The only consolation was that this kind of flurry never lasted. The next big scandal or political unrest or viral celebrity tweet would bump Blake and Yang back out of the limelight. Maybe someday, if she was lucky, Blake could go back to being a moderately well known concert cellist. Or something.
The likelihood that she would be able to return to anything resembling normalcy seemed to be slipping farther away each day.
With the trial date set and Blake’s plane tickets purchased (first to Seattle then to London, no return), there was a feeling that this particular leg of the journey was almost done, for better or for worse. Toasting each other with cans of lukewarm National Bohemian in the empty apartment, Blake and Winter shared a moment of mutual catharsis.
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Waiting to stand witness was a particular blend of anxiety and boredom that, Blake realized, was a bit like the moments spent in the wings of a theater or concert hall, waiting to be called on stage. The obvious massive difference being that, instead of going out to do the thing she loved most in the world in front of a crowd of music aficionados, she was waiting to tell a panel of twelve supposedly neutral strangers how her ex-boyfriend tried to murder her and the woman she was performing with over internet rumors about their romantic involvement.
True to their words, Detectives Ebi and Bree had worked with the DA to limit the amount of time the two women would need to spend in a courtroom. Blake was only needed for two days, Yang was only needed for one.
Blake had followed the first few days out of grim fascination. Adam arrived in the courtroom in a well-tailored suit and a slim red tie, everything from the easy charm he leveled at the judge and jury to the hang-dog slope of his shoulders calculated to make him the sympathetic, misunderstood romantic. His lawyer was a familiar face— Tukson had gotten Adam out of scrapes before, thoroughly earning his ludicrously high fees.
The judge read out the charges: two counts of assault in the first degree, violent hate crime, breaking a restraining order, and attempting to flee across an international border.
Adam put in a plea of temporary insanity.
The District Attorney was a hotshot, take no prisoners lawyer, whose blonde hair and tan would have looked more at home on a California beach than in a courtroom. But Robyn Hill reassured Blake (and, by association, Winter) that the evidence they had against Adam was incontrovertible. It would be hard to claim that he was driven by a momentary madness when they provided his history of violence and abuse, his purchase of a gun in Oregon two weeks before the attack, and the time he spent stalking the two women around Seattle to find the best place for an ambush.
Before Blake even set foot in the witness box, Robyn had brought forward an army of witnesses and evidence. There were former employees who had been collateral damage to Adam’s violent temper, witnesses from parties and social events who had seen his jealousy around Blake, the marks on her arms and her face. The evidence from the restraining order hearing was dusted off and rehashed, including the slideshow of pictures that Blake had hoped never to see again.
She paced the hotel room, eyes glued to the TV. Winter ordered dal and palak paneer and made her sit still long enough to eat it.
The best clothes Blake had for the trial also happened to be her second best concert outfit, further enhancing the feeling that she was about to go and perform in the worlds worst recital. She still walked with a cane, though it was mostly for reassurance that she wasn’t about to faceplant on national television than anything else. She tried to convince herself she couldn’t feel Adam’s eyes burning holes into the back of her bolero, and she refused to glance in his direction to confirm the feeling.
After she was sworn in under oath, Blake took the stand and set her gaze on the District Attorney. She had a rough idea of what was coming, both from Robyn and from Tukson.
The examination was thorough. Robyn walked her through the early days of their relationship, the shift from the honeymoon period to abuse, moving out and getting the restraining order, her career after. As gentle as the DA was, it was ripping open the new-healed scar all over again and it hurt. Blake kept her voice as steady as she could, hands white-knuckled on her cane, embarrassed by the tears that pricked at the corners of her eyes as she talked about finally getting away.
Somehow it was easier to take the cross-examination. Blake knew Tukson would sell Adam out for a song the second a flashier client came along. She knew his cheap shots and stage tricks. Meeting his jabs and insinuations was almost a game, and it was a relief to finally be in a fight where she knew the rules.
Why had it taken her so long to leave if it had been that bad? Had she ever tried to communicate her problems to Adam, rather than taking him to court? How much money had Blake made with Adam working as her manager? What was her relationship like with her parents? When had she left home?
After a few protests of “Objection! Relevance to the case?”, the defense attorney opened his hands wide to the jury in a gesture that said ‘what can you do?’.
“No further questions at this time your honor.”
His self-assurance and the satisfied look he exchanged with his client made Blake’s skin itch, but she held her chin high as she made her shakey way back to the bench. He couldn’t break her. Adam had tried and Tukson was nothing compared to him.
When court was adjourned for the lunch hour, Robyn told Blake she could go back to the hotel and get some rest. Blake would have protested, but a stern look from Winter told her that she probably looked even worse than she felt. Sitting on a hard bench was far more uncomfortable than she had expected it to be, as was holding herself upright for a prolonged period of time. Her belly ached dully, and the beginnings of a headache lanced like fire through her forehead.
Back at the hotel, Blake made a concerted effort to eat the salad Winter had ordered for her, then curled up in bed. As tired as she was, she spent the next twelve hours memorizing the popcorn texture of the ceiling, listening to the harsh buzzing of her own brain.
The final day of the trial and Blake’s second summons saw her wearing a pair of Nordstrom’s slacks and a grey boatneck sweater that she and Winter had hurriedly purchased when they realized that literally all of Blake’s other nice clothes were on their way to London. It wasn’t extremely flattering, but, as Winter pointed out, she was in court and not walking a red carpet.
They had just taken their seats when the door opened again and a murmur broke out through the media section. In walked a tall blonde man with a face much better suited to smiling than the grim frown he currently wore, accompanying a short brunette, Winter’s sister Weiss, and Yang. Blake had seen pictures of Yang’s father and sister before, and their presence in the courtroom didn’t startle her— they lived relatively close by and Yang’s whole family were musicians. Of course they’d be there to provide emotional support.
What Blake wasn’t prepared for was the empty sleeve, tied off in a knot below Yang’s right arm.
Yang was thinner than the last time Blake had seen her, her expression drawn but determined. She caught Blake’s eyes across the room and flashed her a quick smile, but it did nothing to thaw the block of ice that had formed in Blake’s stomach.
Glancing over at Winter, Blake saw that her manager was just as startled by the change to Yang’s appearance as she was.
“Weiss never told me. They must have been trying to keep it quiet.” It was an undertone meant for Blake’s ears only. If Winter had known she would have told Blake. It wouldn’t have been left to shake Blake down into her already fragile core.
Blake focused on her kneecaps, only vaguely registering as the defendant was brought in and court was called to order. She drifted in a swamp of self-recrimination as the proceedings progressed, shrugging off Winter’s hand as the other woman suggested she might go outside, get some air, come back with her head on her shoulders. She ignored Winter’s frustrated sigh, collapsing in around the black hole of her heart.
A clear, familiar voice cut through the fog like a knife.
“Can you please repeat your name for the benefit of the court?”
“Yang Xiao Long.”
Yang sat tall and strong in the witness stand. Her hair, usually wild and loose, had been pulled back into a ponytail. Blake could remember how much work went into brushing that unruly golden mane— who brushed Yang’s hair now? Who tamed it and pulled it out of her face? Blake’s fingernails cut deep into the palms of her hands.
“Would you please walk us through the events of the night of July 24th? Whenever you’re ready.”
Yang took a deep breath, her shoulders settling almost imperceptibly, her left hand loose in her lap. Then she fixed her shockingly purple gaze on Adam. “I was a little behind Blake after locking up the dressing room. I heard a commotion outside of the stage door, a bang and then Blake was screaming. I didn’t think, I just rushed outside. I’ve had smarter moments.” She flashed a chagrined look at the judge and jury. “Blake was on the ground. I saw blood. That motherfucker—“
“—Let the record note that Ms. Xiao Long has pointed at Mr. Taurus.”
“ Mr. Taurus ,” Sarcasm dripped from the syllables. “Had a gun. I knew he was there to kill Blake.”
The defense attorney broke in. “Objection, that is supposition!”
“Sustained. Yang, please just stick to what happened.”
An eyebrow twitched and Yang’s mouth twisted in a half-grimace. “Blake had mentioned him once, I knew a bit more about him just from being in the classical music scene. We all moved in similar circles, news gets around. Anyway, I knew I didn’t want him to shoot her again so I tried to get the gun away from him. You can see how well that went.” She shrugged her right shoulder, the remaining length of her upper arm sweeping towards the jury. “As he shot me he was shouting. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. ‘You ruined her, you fucking dyke. This is just what both of you deserve.’ After that I don’t remember much. I was in a lot of pain, but he wasn’t shooting anymore. I think he ran off.”
Robyn let Yang’s account hang in the air for a second before she stepped in with her examination. Blake didn’t pay much attention to the questions asked or the responses, she just watched the way Yang sat, spoke, gestured. It wasn’t until the cross-examination that she was dragged back into the narrative.
Tukson straightened a sheaf of papers and surveyed Yang evenly. “Ms. Xiao Long, what was your relationship with Blake Belladonna?”
“Objection! Relevance!”
“It is entirely relevant, as it reflects on my client’s state of mind leading up to the attack.”
“Overruled. You may respond to the question, Yang.”
“I had never met Blake before this tour. We were— are— friends,” Blake swallowed a gasp as electric violet eyes met hers across the courtroom. “The media played it up, and we thought it was funny at the time. Nothing worth responding to. There was never time for it to be anything more than that.” Yang’s focus returned to Tukson and Adam, level and damning. Blake drew in a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. “Your client made sure of that.”
In spite of the confidence with which she presented her testimony, Yang swayed a bit as she stepped down from the stand. The bailiff stepped forward to brace her and she grinned a thank you, walking unaided back to her family. Tai took one look at her and stood, gesturing towards the door. Yang said something softly, a slight shake of her head and a glance in Blake’s direction, but her father was insistent. Tai, Ruby, and Yang exited the courtroom, and Weiss moved over to sit with Winter and Blake.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”
Blake met the other woman’s gaze for a second and tried to smile. Winter patted her sister awkwardly on the shoulder.
The rest of the proceedings went without incident. Blake’s testimony didn’t add anything new to the case, but she knew it was another solid nail in Adam’s coffin so she presented it with stoic resolve. If a few tears welled up as she recalled watching Yang’s body crumple, she wiped them away with fingers that did not shake and the other woman was not in the room to witness it.
The Canadian Mounties who had apprehended Adam at the border described him asking if “that dyke bitch and her whore” were dead yet.
Blake gazed calmly down at the man who had controlled her for five years, and listened with surprisingly little emotion as he was declared guilty on all counts and sentenced to 95 years in prison without a chance of parole. Fines were assessed, but she didn’t hear them. She didn’t hear Adam screaming in rage, his perfect facade shattered in the face of the one transgression he couldn’t talk his way out of.
Somehow, Blake made it back to her hotel room. Somehow, she ate dinner and got into her pajamas. Winter left once she had determined that Blake was well set up to sleep and that her alarm was set to get her on the plane to London the next day.
In setting her alarm, Blake realized that she had a text message. She had gotten out of the habit of carrying her phone with her after she stepped away from social media, and so she opened the message without thinking.
Yang: It was good to see you today. I miss you.
Tears that had been building up since she woke up in the hospital a month and a half before burst from Blake in a silent flood. She cried for the two months of happiness, shattered like glass. She cried for the woman, somewhere in the city, removed from her music. She cried for the seventeen year old girl who had thought her life was starting as she signed a contract and took the hand of an evil man. She cried for her own guilt, her shame, her fear, and her loneliness. She cried until she threw up, until there were no tears left and she was left sobbing painfully on the floor of the bathroom.
Rung dry, Blake curled up in the armchair by the window and watched the sun rise on Seattle. When Winter came to get her she was already dressed, sitting on the foot of the bed that she hadn’t slept in with her suitcase at her feet. Wordlessly, she pressed the cellphone into her managers hands and led the way out the door. It spoke to the friendship between them that Winter didn’t question this, just slid the device into her pocket and followed Blake down to the waiting taxi.
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Blake: Take care of yourself Yang. I’m sorry.
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Authors Notes:
-First of all, I would like to apologize for the emotional trauma of this first chapter. Holy shit. I wrote it months ago and rereading it for final edits hurt way more than I expected it to.
-This is my response to the “I got stabbed in the OK stabbing place so I’ll be fine” trope. Your torso is full of important guts and things that don’t appreciate being perforated. Internal bleeding and sepsis are no joke, and the surgeries have significant recovery times. I definitely pestered my dad (a retired emergency medicine nurse) with a lot of very specific questions about bullet wounds and internal damage. He’s used to it.
-I don’t introduce a lot of OCs into my AU fics, if I can use canonical characters I will. But Cody was born of several nurses I’ve had over time, and I love him very much. Nurses are goddamn saints.
-Guarneri was a family of Italian luthiers (violin makers), of a quality considered on par with the more famous Stradivari violins. The most expensive violin in the world, the Guarneri del Gesu, sold for an estimated $16 million and is currently on permanent loan to to violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. (Here’s a lovely video of her discussing and playing this amazing instrument).
-I love me some Ace Ops. Clover is the perpetual Good Cop. And Harriet… Well, we know where Harriet stands.
-I may have done a significant amount of research into hate crime legislation in Washington State to make sure that this would have been a legitimate charge given the circumstances. I also used this research to determine Adam’s sentencing at the end of the trial. I’m pretty sure I gave him the maximum sentence— he deserves it.
-Kucing is Malay for cat, because I am very good at naming things.
-Good old Natty Bo. If you know, you know.
-Oh Robyn, my love, my light. I couldn’t not include you.
Chapter 2: Etwas bewegter
Summary:
Etwas bewegter (Ger.): Somewhat of a momentum.
Chapter Text
Etwas bewegter (Ger.): Somewhat of a momentum.
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“Blake, you’re coming out with us. That is not a request, it’s an order.” Sun was just about as intimidating as a golden retriever in a bow tie, for all that he had a foot in height on her and wore what he must have thought was a ‘serious business’ facial expression.
Band rehearsal was one of Blake’s favorite times of the week (or the month, depending on how busy the rest of the group was) and she was well-practiced at dodging out of the invitations for post-jam socialization. But the look on Sun’s face, combined with Neptune’s grin and Ilia’s crossed arms and diverted gaze, told her she wouldn’t be able to just make an excuse and slip away.
“Since when do you think you can give me orders?”
“Since I’m the band leader. You need to get involved in team building at some point, come on.”
Neptune rounded on his boyfriend. “Who said you were the band leader?”
The bantering distracted both of them thoroughly enough that Blake finished packing her keyboard in its case and slung it over her shoulder without them noticing. When she went to reach for her purse, though, Ilia was waiting for her. Ilia looked at Blake, one eyebrow raised.
“You know I’m not much of a bar person, I don’t even drink anymore.”
The redhead snorted, head to one side. “Neither do I, but I still have fun going out with these idiots. Blake, we just want to hang out with you outside of work. We’re your friends and we hardly see you.”
Blake resisted the urge to point out that most people hardly saw her, since this would likely prove Ilia’s point. She sighed, scooping her bag up off of the chair where she’d tossed it at the beginning of rehearsal. “Fine. But can we please not go to the place you dragged me last time? It was very loud and a lady stuck her ass in my face without asking first.”
Neptune whooped in victory, though Sun pouted at Blake’s pickiness.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with Liza’s, they have the best daiquiris in Croydon.”
Ilia intervened. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk, Sun. There’s got to be someplace open on a Thursday night that serves food and plays their music at less than 100 decibels.”
“Liza’s has amazing steak pies…”
As the group left the soundproofed warehouse space that served as their rehearsal and recording studio, three of them argued the relative benefits of their favorite strip clubs on the South End. Strip clubs were their mutually agreed-upon destination of choice, as the food was usually pretty good, the drinks were cheap, and none of them had to worry about attracting unwanted attention from other patrons. Beyond that point, the differences of opinions proliferated. Blake trailed behind, smiling slightly at her friend’s enthusiasm and boundless ability to disagree with each other.
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It was thanks to Sun and Ilia that she left her flat at all, especially after the first year back in London. She had initially moved in with her parents, just until she could find a place of her own that she could afford on her dwindling royalties and savings. She stayed off the internet, at first avoiding the dwindling fanfare around the trial, then avoiding anything that even vaguely reminded her of Yang.
Her cello collected dust in the corner and she turned back to the piano, an instrument she had strongly disliked since childhood. She spent days forcing herself through the most tedious and difficult concertos she could find in her parent’s music library. Her grandmother had been a piano teacher and had a massive suitcase full of faded, cracking sheet music in the attic. Her hands ached as she abused muscle groups she hadn’t used in years, but it felt good to simply do something without any intention of growth or reward.
Winter flew in to help finalize the transfer of the last of the financial reparations from the trial, and set about helping Blake find some place to live. Kali wasn’t particularly comfortable with her only daughter moving out on her own again, especially since Blake didn’t seem inclined to eat if she wasn’t prompted, but when they found a flat in the same building as Ilia she thawed a bit to the idea.
Having her own space was a blessing. Though Blake couldn’t take her parent’s grand piano with her to the tiny studio, she found a second-hand upright that fit in the freight elevator and Ilia helped to wheel it down the hallway to her door. They got it inside with minimal damage to the doorframe and the piano. The crotchety instrument wouldn’t hold a tune for longer than three months at a time, but Blake ended up making friends with the piano tuner and they shared tea whenever he stopped in.
Blake still wouldn’t play her cello. Winter swore up and down she could get Blake a seat in any symphony orchestra in the country, but Blake dug in her heels. She missed playing the cello with a bone-deep ache that spoke to gold-glowing memories— and that was the problem. She could go back to what she had done before, but what would it mean for what had happened? It felt too much like forgetting, pretending that everything was fine, moving on.
When it became apparent that she was going to have to find a steady source of income or move back in with her parents, Blake wracked her brain for something she could do that wouldn’t require her to leave her apartment or touch her cello. She started to take piano students of her own, children of her parents friends at first, and then more as word spread. Children seemed to like her for reasons beyond Blake’s understanding, and at the very least she remembered (and avoided) the things that had made her hate piano lessons when she was young. She was patient, kind when they were frustrated, encouraging when they wanted to quit.
She left the building as little as possible. Ilia brought her groceries at first, until she showed Blake an app she could download to have them delivered to her door. Blake went to her parents house for dinner once a month, sweating all the way there and then practically running the last few steps from the elevator to her apartment when she got home. Her mother was openly concerned about Blake’s lack of social interactions outside of her students and Ilia, and her father just watched her, golden eyes so much like her own in his troubled face.
Sun introduced himself about five months after Blake moved into her own place. He and Neptune lived down the hall and he had heard Blake playing Rachmaninov at eleven at night and was curious enough to knock on her door. He brought a plate of biscuits, and what could Blake do but invite him inside for a cup of tea?
Where Blake was reserved and awkward in conversation, Sun made up for it in spades. He gave her a thorough rundown on what had to be his and his boyfriend’s entire life story, expressed a deep sensual love of Russian composers, and admitted that the biscuits were from the freezer section of the grocery store, all in the first fifteen minutes of his first visit. Blake also gathered that he was a specialist in traditional Chinese instruments, though he felt strongly about playing them outside of their classical forms. He invited her over for dinner the next night to hear his rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” on the Guzheng.
Sun’s boyfriend Neptune was every bit as irrepressible as Sun was, though he was a lot more suave in his demeanor and carriage. Neptune was a classical tenor, and the two of them had met studying music at Durham. When, with a good deal of cheerful peer pressure, they managed to convince Blake to play the introduction to the second act of La Traviatta , Blake was delighted when Neptune burst into song. His clear tenor soared along the arching refrains of “De’ Miei Bollenti Spiriti” as she picked her way through the unfamiliar sheet music.
For the first time in months, Blake felt herself experiencing the sweeping joy of making music with another person who shared her passion. The dizzying delight of the realization lasted right up until she got back to her own apartment. Then guilt dropped back around her as surely as the bars of a freshly sprung trap. The joy was unearned, her freedom to play and laugh with friends was undeserved. She curled up on the corner of the couch, frozen by her own self-loathing.
But the next morning Sun arrived to drag her to the local farmers market with him, and he was completely unfazed by the fact that she was still in her clothes from the night before, her eyes red and puffy from tears unshed. He gave her a hug and pushed her in the direction of the shower, warning that he would be back in fifteen minutes so she had better get a move on.
Friendship with Sun wasn’t so much a conscious decision on Blake’s part, but an inevitability, like the dawn. Ilia accepted him with surprising grace, though she clashed with Neptune whenever they were within three meters of each other. And with this friendship Blake found herself, almost against her own will, building a life for herself again.
She still found herself frozen at times, trapped in her mind and the four quiet walls of her living room, but then there would be a phone call from Winter, dinner with her parents, game night with her neighbors. As much as her fear pursued her, the people who loved her propelled her forward and out of its clutches. Breathing seemed easier somehow, and she tried not to dwell too much on whether or not she deserved it.
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When Sun wanted to form a band, Blake was the first one he approached about joining. He had it all planned out; Blake could play the synthesizer, Sun would play Guzheng and Erhu, Neptune on vocals and Ilia on the electric bass. When she protested that she had never played a synthesizer before, he borrowed one from a friend and grinned as she dove headfirst into noodling with the different settings.
At first they just goofed around with covers of classic rock and punk standards, but then Blake and Neptune teamed up on songwriting and between the two of them they soon had a small repertoire of original works. In an entirely one-sided vote, Sun settled on the name Moon Reflects for the group, which suited their variety of ambient post-rock well enough that none of the others chose to disagree. The band was a fun side gig for a group of professional musicians who didn’t take themselves too seriously.
Playing with Moon Reflects got Blake out into public, really into public, more than anything else she had taken on since moving back to London. None of them were trying to make it big, they just enjoyed playing for appreciative crowds, so they performed at house parties and garage shows hosted by other musicians. Blake stuck close to the rest of the band and dipped out as soon as the music was over.
But the magic of performance was back, and a stronger voice in Blake’s head that sounded a lot like Sun pointed out that she shouldn’t let Adam take this from her too. So she made something like peace with her guilt and appreciated her friend’s joy.
When Neptune’s buddy Flint approached her after a set, Blake greeted him cheerfully and was shortly thereafter introduced to his friend Neon. Neon, a bouncy ravecore rainbow-incarnate, was directing the production of an independent video game and she loved Blake’s compositions for Moon Reflects . Had Blake ever considered writing music for game design?
No, but she was getting used to doing things she’d never done before. Blake let Neon scribble her cell number and email address onto her forearm with a red Sharpie and went home to sleep on this new possibility.
Blake waited until the next afternoon to call Winter to ask for her advice. Her erstwhile manager insisted on seeing the contract, but was delighted to hear that Blake was getting back into doing something with her own creative energy. After a walkthrough of the game concept and design, Blake found herself jittering with inspiration and excitement. With Winter’s blessing she signed the contract and started work on the soundtrack for Grimm Awakenings.
Busy-ness was something new to Blake’s status quo— she had to whittle down her piano students to just the few that she really clicked with, giving the others good references to acquaintances that could take them on. She wasn’t willing to cut down her time with her bandmates, and now that she was in the throes of artistic inspiration it was once more vitally important that she had something to get her out of her flat.
When the promo for the Grimm Awakenings dropped at E3, the gaming world exploded. A small project from a start-up studio in London was in line to be one of the most anticipated games of the season. Blake appreciated the pseudonym clause that Winter had worked into her contract, as she watched Neon’s social media erupt with detractors and fans alike. Neon was a Twitter queen, taking a disconcerting amount of delight in verbally demolishing small minded misogynists.
Sun admitted to being concerned that Blake wouldn’t have time for Moon Reflects with all of the attention her work on Grimm Awakenings was receiving, but Blake was quick to reassure him. Now that she had rediscovered how much it meant to her, she wouldn’t give up the opportunity to play music with her friends for anything.
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She admitted to herself that getting to play music with her friends also meant that she had to tolerate Sun and Neptune’s good natured teasing. As they all piled into Sun’s sedan to drag her along on their after-rehearsal carousing, the awkward size of Blake’s beloved keyboard made for a difficult seating arrangement and opened her up for good-natured taunting.
Blake had purchased her Prophet X when she found that she’d finally saved up enough money not to have to worry about being able to pay her rent every month; she was loath to leave it behind, even in the very well-secured warehouse where they rehearsed. Consequently, Ilia had to sit half-on Blake’s lap while they drove, the keyboard buckled up safely in a seat of its own as the tiny Datsun bounced over potholes and swayed around corners.
The Hot Spot, as their destination was called, was moderately less noisy than Liza’s, and they were able to jam into a booth at the back where the likelihood of a non-consensual ass to the face was greatly diminished. The steak pies may not have been as good, but the twice-baked potato that Blake ordered was lovely, and the woman in the crop top who took their orders had winked at Blake and brought her three extra cherries in her Shirley Temple. So, all things considered, she was less resentful at having been dragged out on a weeknight than she had expected.
“Hey Blake, have you seen this yet?” Sun was holding out his phone to her, a video queued up on the screen. She peered at it, seeing a blurry still of a pair of bare feet standing in grass and a title that read ‘Grimm Awakenings Theme, first try’.
“Sun I can barely hear in here, do I really need to watch this right now?” Blake’s attention was torn between Sun, her food, and Ilia and Neptune at the stage, laying out pound notes for a dancer in kitty ears and a tiny pleated skirt.
Sun was bouncing with barely contained excitement at whatever he had discovered, but the general ruckus in the establishment combined with the small screen and tinny speakers threatened to overwhelm all of her remaining patience. Sun dug around in his pocket and pulled out his headphones, pushing them her way along with the phone. Reluctantly, Blake popped in the earbuds and hit the play button.
It was a TikTok video, she quickly realized, as a woman’s voice from off screen said, “Ok, go!”
“You’re recording? Oh gosh—“ There was a self conscious laugh, the voice shaking loose some cobwebs of memory as the camera panned up to take in the figure of a woman, standing tall and proud in a sunlit back yard, a violin balanced gracefully under her chin. A woman with long golden hair, falling untamed past her waist. Light glinted off the glossy yellow paint of her prosthetic right arm and she brought her bow to the strings.
Yang all but danced in place as she played through the familiar haunting melody that was the intro refrain Blake had written for Grimm Awakenings. Yang grinned as her fingers kissed the strings, a sunflower in a field of green with trees swaying behind her. A small grey and white dog, a corgi, jumped around her feet. The video looped after a minute, and Blake watched it two more times before she could drag her shocked gaze away from the screen and back up to Sun’s smug face.
“How— how did you find this?”
“How? It’s gone viral. Did you see the number of hits on that video? That’s your music Blake!” He pounded her on the shoulder, misinterpreting her shell-shocked expression. Numb, she clinked her glass with his as prompted and felt her face making the rough approximation of a smile in response to his enthusiasm, but she couldn’t hear anything else he said over the blood pounding in her ears.
Yang was playing again. Yang was playing music Blake had written. There was no way Yang could have known it was Blake’s music, which made it all the more mind-boggling that this video existed. Yang looked happy. Yang looked whole.
Blake made it through the rest of the night in a floating sort of haze. Once they found out about the video, Neptune called for another round of drinks and Ilia gave her friend a very tight hug. The only sign that Ilia might have recognized the woman in the video was the probing look she gave Blake, but apparently she didn’t see anything in Blake’s demeanor to be too concerned over, so she settled on happy.
Blake was happy too. Happy and light. She felt like she might float away.
She downloaded TikTok.
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When Blake got home after getting drinks with her friends, she made herself a very strong cup of tea, changed into her comfiest pajamas, and set up the most anonymous, music-related TikTok username she could come up with.
Schoenbergs_gin_and_tonic started following sunnylittledragon
Blake watched every single video Yang had posted. And then she watched them again.
Yang started her account about two months after her amputation, at first using it as a platform to respond to fans when Twitter didn’t have the right amount of punch or her feelings exceeded the 280 character limit. Her first video was a response to a music critic who stated that Yang losing her arm was as bad if she had died in the attack. Yang stared into the camera for a good ten seconds, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, fuck the rest of me I guess. Imma head out.” She slapped her hands, flesh and metal, against her thighs and stood up walking out of frame.
Her videos after that followed a similar vein. Yang was equal parts matter of fact, funny, educational, and brutally honest. She responded to a series of videos where creators showed off their grip strength by ripping apart or squashing apples by crushing one with her prosthetic hand… and then cussing under her breath while she scrubbed apple pulp out of her finger joints.
Over the months, Yang began to share more and more of her journey with various types of prosthesis. She showed how she put them on and took them off, demonstrated various daily tasks either one-handed or with a prosthesis, and responded to viewer questions.
And she never stopped making music. She sat beside her sister and played the left hand portion of the Maple Leaf Rag while Ruby played the right, laughing the whole time. She tried out different types of instruments, with varying degrees of success, but each time she played she shone with joy.
Yang talked about serious topics, like accessibility in fashion, products, and architecture, and her experiences with ignorance and microaggressions in public. She shared the story of the final decision to go with a transhumoral amputation, after months of painful and ultimately fruitless corrective surgeries.
And finally, a little more than a year after she started her account, she shared a video of an experimental prosthesis that gave her the dexterity and range of motion to pick up her bow again. The ball and socket swivel of the attachment allowed her a degree of delicacy Yang had not been able to express with any previous limbs. She played a “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” that only a Suzuki mom would love, and not a single person in the room had a dry eye. Blake included.
The lab that built the prosthetic found itself crowdfunded to complete the project and bring it to market overnight. Yang’s next video was a very casual interview with the inventor of her new arm, a thoroughly charming older man named Pietro Polandina, who seemed like a cross between a toy maker and a mad scientist. He had designed and built himself a mobility aid that carried him around with the help of six hydraulic legs. Pietro and Yang were incorrigible and the interview had to be broken out over five videos because they kept getting sidetracked by puns and dark humor.
“Twinkle Twinkle” was just the start. Yang began to teach herself violin all over again. The video that Blake had first seen was the culmination of six months of rigorous, often discouraging practice and failure. But she kept going, building up muscle memory and finding a way to express her own style in a new way.
Blake’s favorite video, other than the one that made her cry whenever she watched it, was Yang jamming along with Ruby’s band. She played a violently yellow electric fiddle, painted to match her arm, and they rocked their way through a largely improvised heavy metal variation of “Donald McGillavry”.
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After her epic marathon of The Life of Yang, internet stalker style, Blake realized two things: 1.) after spending two years almost entirely cut off from the internet, TikTok made her feel very old, and 2.) she needed to respond to Yang. She just had to figure out how.
Which is why she went to ask Neon for help. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be way more trouble than it was worth.
“But what are you thinking of posting? Thirst traps? Cooking? Uwu gamer girl content? You’d look super cute in kitty ears, I have some clothes you can borrow.”
Blake groaned, snatching her phone back out of Neon’s hands. “You know what, I’m just going to as Sage for help—“
“Nononono, I must be the one to indoctrinate, er, educate you.” Neon was grinning from ear to ear, looking for all the world like she’d just stepped off the pages of a Lewis Carroll book. It did not bode well for the contents of the next few hours of Blake’s life.
Intro to TikTok 101 was permeated with digs and innuendos at Blake’s expense, but by the end of the evening she felt confident that she could navigate the app with a modicum of finesse. And she knew a lot more about the sexual preferences of the woman who was ostensibly her boss than she had ever expected or desired.
“So, what got you interested anyway? Was it that hot blonde chick playing the Grimm theme on violin? Dude, sploosh , y’know what I mean?”
She should have asked Sage.
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One of the nice things about being largely self-employed was that Blake could spend as much time as she wanted figuring out how to make halfway decent TikTok videos. One of her remaining piano students, a precocious fifteen year old named Aisling, turned out to be a surprise asset. She was easily twice as much help as Neon had been when it came to actually framing shots, and editing video and sound together in the app.
“I never go with the auto-sync option unless I’m busy and I just want to make a video really fast.” Mendelssohn lay forgotten on the piano bench as Aisling and Blake crowded together on her couch, the student becoming the teacher and the teacher the student.
Blake experienced a brief moment of guilt for wasting an hour of (not inexpensive) tutoring time on an unrelated pursuit, but she eased her conscience with cynicism; Aisling was miles ahead of any of Blake’s other students and she had a sneaking suspicion that the kid’s parents used piano lessons as a posh nanny service. Considering the contents of Aisling’s TikTok account— videos of her singing and playing her own soulful compositions, a few dance trends with a small group of friends, and the same friends in costumes at MCM London— she had to wonder what sorts of teenage hijinx Mr. and Mrs. Ye thought their daughter would get up to if left to her own devices. Aggravated geekery at Waterstones? Starting a flash mob to “Call Me Maybe”? Not that Blake had a problem being paid to spend an hour every Tuesday and Thursday nitpicking the minutiae of Bach and Rachmaninov with a friendly and respectful teenager, but the thought that said teenager needed a keeper was frankly amusing.
With Aisling’s expert direction Blake recorded herself playing the assai vivace from Hammerklavier, and edited and posted the video, complete with relevant hashtags. When Blake checked back in on her account that evening, waiting for the microwave to finish reheating a bowl of leftover dal and aloo gobi, she had twelve hundred views, seven hundred likes, and four comments. Two comments were friendly and encouraging, one was spam, and one accused her of stealing the video from another site and reposting it on a private account. She also suddenly had a dozen new followers— she recognized Neon, Sun, and Aisling’s usernames among the crowd.
Feeling bolstered, Blake used the same set up as before to record a quick jazzy improvisation off of themes from the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtrack. In a moment of inspiration, she stuck a post it note with her username written on it to the keyboard within frame. Take that, random internet troll.
Even though she dragged her heavy brass floor lamp over to illuminate the area, the lighting wasn’t great— her first video had been shot right when the glorious afternoon sun was spilling through her wide living room windows and the low wattage energy saving bulb couldn’t compete. She messed with a few filters and eventually settled on one that gave the video an almost fire-lit cast, rather than washed out and stark.
The next day, taking advantage of the natural afternoon lighting once more, Blake fine-tuned her filming set up. She filmed a thirty second clip of Variations in F Minor, noting areas for improvement as she edited the video and posted it. It was good, but it could be better.
She worked up a sweat rearranging her living room so that any glimpse of her background would be a minimalist selection of well-curated musical ephemera and would not include the three foot tall lime green lamp in the shape of Sir Elton John that Ilia had given her for her birthday. She hung the IKEA curtains that had been in the big blue and yellow bag by the door for over a month. The teetering stack of fashion magazines, a year's worth of well-meaning gifts from Kali in an effort to encourage her daughter to wear something other than sweaters and leggings, finally made it into the recycling bin. Abandoned tea mugs in various stages of the life cycle were located and brought to the kitchen for a scrubbing. Standing in the doorway to her apartment and surveying the result, Blake had to admit that the space was much more welcoming. A pleasant change from the previous state, which Ilia had described at times as “depression chic” and, when she was feeling less generous, “a tragedy in slow motion”.
She made a reluctant pilgrimage to her nearest Currys to pick up a tripod and a ring light, and, on impulse, a well-rated directional USB microphone. Blake pointedly ignored the cashier’s attempts at small talk— she felt a little embarrassed that she was spending a significant portion of her incidental money on technology to make videos for social media. As she boarded the tube home, Blake realized that there might be more scandalous things he could assume she was going to be doing with the amateur filming equipment. Contemplating herself in the dark window of the train, she decided that her faded purple joggers, oversized men’s fleece pullover, and dirty grey trainers did not scream “budding Only Fans starlet”, so she was probably ok in that regard.
It took a week of tweaking her space, posting occasional short piano pieces, experimenting with duets and stitches, and falling down the rabbithole of the For You Page, before Blake realized that she was postponing the inevitable. Her cello still sat in its case, unopened and untouched since she placed it in the corner of her bedroom when she moved in. Blake considered her options.
She wanted to reply to the video Yang had posted, to play along with her and match the unbounded joy in Yang’s performance. She could do it on the piano— but she had written the theme for cello and violin. The music she composed for Grimm Awakenings bounced between symphonic and synthesized, but the dialogue between the violin and cello carried the main melodic motif. At the time it was a concession to the largely unacknowledged voice of melancholy recollection that tugged Blake back in time to that stage in Seattle and a moment of perfect diapason.
Of her friends, only Winter had acknowledged the significance of this compositional choice. That acknowledgement took the form of a FaceTime call at 7AM London time for the express purpose of Winter delivering the full force of her weaponized raised eyebrow, unstoppable in the face of Blake’s early morning bleariness. After sitting in silence for a moment, Winter confirmed that she had listened to the rough edit of the title screen theme and that she thought it was excellent. She didn’t question Blake’s decision, or require an explanation. She didn’t ask the other woman why she would compose something for an instrument she had refused to touch for three years. But, all the same, she managed to convey her recognition, her comprehension, and her support for Blake’s process of healing.
Now, Blake knew that the only way she could play a duet with Yang would be by picking up her cello once more and acknowledging the minefield of emotions that went along with it. She sat on her bed, rumpled duvet pulled over her feet, and stared at the hard instrument case for a brief eternity. A tote bag of sheet music leaned against it, and at some point she had started to use it as a place to drape her scarves for easy accessibility, but other than that it was unremarkable. An inanimate object, and, she mused, one that carried it’s own layers of wistful dejection.
The beauty of an instrument was its use— even the most glorious Stradivarius was nothing but an attractive arrangement of fine wood and stretched intestine without a bow and hands to bring it to life. Setting her jaw, Blake pushed herself to her feet. She shoved the scarves to the side, letting them pile on the floor to be taken care of later, and grasped the handle of the case to lift it free of the detritus around it. It was lighter than she remembered, physically and metaphorically.
Blake carried her case out into the living room and laid it out on her couch so that she could flip the latches on the side, then finally lift the lid to reveal the bright honey-gold wood of her cello. She was immediately struck by the happy-sad heart twist of seeing an old friend after too long a time. Carefully lifting the instrument from the felt, she sat down on the corner of the coffee table and balanced it against her knee as she extended the end pin.
She plucked the A string and was greeted by a sullen, flat thump. Ah, yes. Three years since she last tuned. Blake experienced a brief moment of panic, checking the cello all over for dry or cracking wood, peeling veneer, and loose tuning knobs, but was relieved to discover that everything was largely as she had left it. She would have to rehair the bow soon, and she definitely needed new strings, but otherwise everything was sound. Tuning up, she fingered an E minor chord and drew the bow across the strings. The mellow hum buzzed down to her bones, eliciting a surprised shiver of delight.
Dragging a scrap of Dvorak from her distant memory, Blake picked her way through a passage. It was far below tempo, she slid clumsily into the correct notes, and her bow clacked against the belly of her cello as she rediscovered the spatial memory of playing, but Blake grinned all the way through. Her fingertips twinged, a reminder that she had lost a significant portion of the calluses she had spent fifteen years developing. It didn’t matter— calluses would return. An invisible wall had crumbled away to nothing and Blake felt as though she could do anything.
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Finally reuniting with her beloved instrument was glorious, but, even so, practicing was agony. She felt clumsier than she ever had as a seven year old. Blake had never been so grateful for a string mute as she was those first two days. Though her neighbors were relatively tolerant she doubted they would enjoy the same off-tempo rendition of Agnus Dei played forty times in a row.
Gradually Blake’s old confidence returned. She had her set up, her medium, and, at last, her instrument. Pulling up a chair in the slanting golden light, Blake set her bow to the strings and recorded her duet.
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The buzzing of her cellphone on her nightstand gradually pulled Blake from slumber. Groggily, she picked it up and checked the caller ID, then slid the bar to answer the call.
“Winter. It’s four in the morning.”
“I don’t give a fuck what time it is— when were you going to tell me that you started playing cello again? Or that you even had a TikTok account, for that matter?”
Blake rubbed at her scratchy eyes with the back of her hand, trying to connect the dots of this early morning tirade. Comprehension was complicated by the fact that it was conveyed at a very high volume and with a good deal of annoyance, which she certainly did not feel was justified. “What? Why would… I mean, I picked the cello back up a couple days ago, it’s not that big a thing, but why does the TikTok matter?”
“It matters because I’m still your manager and that video you posted has gone viral overnight! On an instrument you swore you never wanted to touch again, in response to a performer you have been doing everything within your power to avoid for the last three years! Not that I blame you for that, but damn girl, you couldn’t have given me a little warning?!?!”
With numb fingers Blake swapped over to speakerphone and opened the TikTok app. The notification bar greeted her with a number far larger than she could comprehend in her sleep-addled state. “How the fuck…?”
Winter’s response was a nonsensical barrage of syllables and Blake shoved the phone under her pillow until her friend ran out of steam.
“You’re going to wake up my neighbor, and she’s 78.” Winter gave her a very creative, anatomically improbable, and highly illegal suggestion for what she could do with Mrs. Crabtree, which Blake chose to ignore. “I can’t deal with this right now. I’ll call you in the morning and we can talk then. For now… I don’t know. It’s not like I posted it with my own name and face, you only figured it out because you know my apartment. The internet will do what it does best, regardless of whether I’m awake for it. I need to get at least five more hours of sleep before I can handle you or any of that circus.”
That prompted a sardonic laugh on the other end of the line. “Okay, fine. Get your sleep. But I’m definitely not going to be the only one who recognizes you— she’s a smart girl. She’ll figure it out eventually.”
“I doubt it. She knew me for two months three years ago. It’s just…” Blake pulled her knees to her chest, gazing up at the dark ceiling of her bedroom. “It’s good enough knowing that she might see it. And that I got to play with her again.”
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Author’s notes:
-Damn I love these goobers.
-I probably lived in Portland too long and it skewed my perspective— when I think of a good place to hang out with friends, strip clubs are at the top of my list for all of the reasons stated above.
-Sun and Neptune are just. My fave.
-Here’s a fucking amazing version of Stairway to Heaven played on the Gayageum, the 12 stringed cousin of the 24 stringed Chinese Guzheng.
-De Miei Bollenti Spiriti, La Traviatta
-Moon Reflects is a reference to what is probably one of the most famous pieces of music ever composed for the Erhu, “The Reflection of the Moon on Erquan Pool”
-Blake’s work on Grimm Awakenings is a combination of Horizon Zero Dawn, Journey, and The Witcher soundtracks. Haunting, exciting, and glorious.
- Ito Manami-San is a Paralympian swimmer and violinist with a full right arm amputation. Her adaptive prosthetic is an innovative analog construction, paired with a guide on the body of the violin to keep the bow in place on the strings. Yang’s prosthetic is inspired by this design, with a little Polandina science/magic thrown in that allows her to control her bow weight on the strings and gives her the ability to play col legno battuto, or striking the strings with the bow for staccato intonation.
-TikTok user @footlessjo provides an often hilarious, starkly honest perspective on her experiences as an amputee; @vadaiguess has chronicled the process of having their ring finger and pinky fully amputated, including the complications arising from surgical decisions made without their input; @2fingered_t_rex was born with symbrachydactyly, lacking hands or fingers, and she is just an absolute delight. There are thousands more awesome disabled TikTok creators, using the platform as a way to spread accessibility awareness and normalize disability in the public eye.
-Blake’s username refers to Arnold Schoenberg, a Jewish expressionist composer of the 20th century whose body of work included musical theory regarding the referencing of pitches to a central tone rather than the associated tonic. It’s an old musician joke; “Schoenberg walks into a bar and orders a gin, no tonic.”
-Donald McGillavry is such a bop
-Ruby’s band is a fantasy metal group called The Maidens. Ruby plays lead guitar, Weiss is the vocalist, Penny plays bass and is the backup vocalist, and Nora plays the drums.
-Aisling Ye is a lovely, nerdy Chinese-Irish teenager, living her best upper middle class life in London. Needless to say, I adore her.
-Variations in F Minor, Haydn
-Diapason (n.): A grand, swelling burst of harmony.
Chapter 3: Con bravura
Summary:
Con bravura (Adj.): boldly, flaunting technical skill
Chapter Text
Con bravura (Adj.): boldly, flaunting technical skill
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The cellist sat on a high-backed antique chair, the bright wood of the instrument propped between slender knees glowing like gold in the sunlight. Their bow flashed across the strings, picking out the alto counterpoint to the melody from Yang’s original clip. The video was small, only half of the screen, but Yang peered at it closely, trying to pick out any details she could. Books on the shelves were obscured by shadows, something glowed with a green light off the right hand side of the screen, and was that a glimpse of city skyline through the sliver of visible window? Her third cup of coffee was growing cold by her elbow, but when the video looped once more she just kept watching.
“Seriously, that again? At least half of the views on that video have to be from you at this point.” Ruby gently teased her sister, grinning in response to the middle finger Yang extended in response. She tugged the door of the fridge open and grabbed the bottle of French vanilla creamer, doctoring up her own coffee as Yang watched through two more times.
“I don’t know. The style is really familiar. I know it’s a long shot, I just…”
“…hope it’s her?” Ruby gave her sister a sympathetic look as she pulled up a chair. “I know, Yang. I really do too. But you haven’t heard from her in years. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The unspoken ‘again’ hung in the air between them. Yang closed the app and shoved her phone across the table, turning her attention to her tepid beverage. A quick blast in the microwave brought it back up to a drinkable temperature, and Yang resumed her seat next to her little sister with mug in hand and half of an awkward smile on her face.
“Thanks Rubes. I’m not getting my hopes up, don’t worry. The fans have some pretty interesting theories anyway. The best one I’ve seen so far is that it’s actually Neon Katt herself, and she secretly also composed and played all of the instruments for the soundtrack. I haven’t confirmed if they think she also did all of the voice acting, coding, and promotion herself, but I shudder to think how much I should be getting up to on a regular basis if that’s their baseline for accomplishment.” Yang tugged her phone back in front of her and keyed the screen to life, pulling up a Tumblr post. “This one is good too— apparently I did both of the videos. I just played the cello with my REAL ARM in the second one, because I’m faking my amputation. You know, for attention.”
Ruby chuckled, jostling Yang’s shoulder. “That sounds like you, you’re sneaky.”
The redirect worked, for now. The younger woman was far too insightful for the sake of Yang’s mental and physical health.
“So, what are your plans for today?”
“I have a livestream scheduled for this afternoon.” The income Yang made with her streaming and social media was modest, but she didn’t need much. Her dad was letting her stay in the mother-in-law apartment over the garage rent free, as long as she helped him with the yard work and paid for her electricity and internet. Tai would probably have let her stay even without those stipulations, but Yang already felt like a freeloader and didn’t want to take further advantage of his generosity. With Ruby staying there too when she was in town, it was almost like when they were kids again. It was nice.
“I need to record a couple videos today to put up later this week. I think I’m going to do that Q&A, and maybe a video game medley. Does the band have rehearsal tonight?”
Downing the last of her coffee, Ruby stood and lightly slapped her sister on the shoulder. “As long as Nora is feeling better, we plan to.” A roller derby accident had put The Maiden’s drummer out of commission for a couple of weeks and they had some catching up to do before their next gig in Portland. “Let me know if you need any help with filming, I’m not up to much until later. I just promised dad I’d get groceries.”
“Thanks Ruby.”
Yang ate some cold PopTarts with the last of her coffee, then took Zwei for a walk down to the end of the dirt road to grab their mail. The warmth of the late spring sun baked the dew of the night before into low-lying humidity, and the birds chasing bugs through the berry brambles chirruped and rustled cheerfully. Yang could appreciate the nice weather after the long wet winter, though the full baking heat of summer would be on them soon enough.
Zwei preferred to poke around in the backyard and crunch on mysterious objects found in the bushes, so Yang went inside on her own. Settling into her living room turned studio, Yang checked her email while her Polandina prosthetic finished charging, warming up the fingers of her left hand with a stress ball. She let the stump of her right arm breathe when she could— it cut down on the funk and reduced chafing on the extensive scarring that was the legacy of the multiple surgical attempts to save her limb.
The nicest thing about having a dedicated filming space was the time she saved by not having to set up and break down her equipment every time she needed to make content. Her gaming computer was set off to one side and she only had to swivel her lights in order to illuminate either area of the room. With three hours before her scheduled stream (she was playing Stardew Valley and romancing as many of the cute boys and girls as the game permitted), Yang knew she could probably fit in at least one TikTok video after she did her makeup and hair.
Freshly showered, hair blow-dried and tumbling loose down her back, the bare minimum of makeup needed to feel presentable on camera, Yang flicked on her ring lights and plugged in her electric violin. A few tweaks of the pegs were all that was needed to bring it back into perfect tune, and she ran through a quick staccato arpeggio to loosen herself up. What to play?
The haunting tune of Zelda’s lullaby came to mind, gently transitioning into the cheerful waltz tune of Kas’s theme and finishing with Sidon’s arching refrain. She ran through the transitions a few times, tweaking the key to make each part of the medley stand out as distinct while carrying the main theme throughout. Once she felt like she had it filled out the way she wanted it, Yang turned on her camera and filmed several run-throughs, varying speed and intensity each time to give herself options in editing.
Thankfully editing was a relatively simple process, and she sped through it with an eye on the clock as her stream time rapidly approached. On a whim, after checking her hashtags and making sure her annotations were accurate, Yang added— “ @shoenbergs_gin_and_tonic… show me what you’ve got. ;) ”
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Less than six hours after her Legend of Zelda medley was posted, Yang was notified that she had been tagged in a duet. She slipped out of the soundproofed garage at Nora and Ren’s place so she wouldn’t disturb the band practicing within, hiding in the hallway to cue up the TikTok video.
“ @sunnylittledragon: Challenge accepted ”
It was the same background as before, though it was at night and lit by the indirect warm glow of several lamps and hanging strands of white Christmas lights. Her anonymous duet partner was wearing fuzzy flannel pajama pants with a triforce pattern and had a plushie of Link resting by their socked feet. They played a harmony to Yang’s melody, adding flourishes and callbacks to previous melodic themes. As they finished, text flashed across the screen. “That was fun, let’s do it again!”
The grin that split Yang’s face was so wide it almost hurt. She jumped to the user’s account page, glancing through the other videos on the account for any other clues. Other than the two most recent, every other video was of piano pieces. Yang remembered Blake commenting how much she disliked playing the piano, something about how her first piano teacher would make her play the same ten notes over and over for an hour straight. Yang tried not to be disappointed at the diminishing likelihood that her unattainable crush was surreptitiously contacting her through social media videos (especially when she put it like that— seriously, who would come up with this stuff?), and tried to focus on the fact that a person with obvious talent and passion was collaborating with her.
Impulsively, she tabbed over to the inbox screen and opened a DM to @schoenbergs_gin_and_tonic.
@sunnylittledragon: Hi, I would love to do more collabs with you! What do you want to do next?
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The mysterious cellist didn’t keep Yang waiting long. Ruby came charging into Yang’s bedroom bright and early the next morning (ok, more like 10:30, but it was early enough) and flung herself across Yang’s feet with giddy excitement.
“Check your feed, check your feed!” She bounced with barely contained glee, and was quickly joined by Zwei who never wanted to be left out of a puppy pile.
Yang groaned, kicking at her sister to free her feet and grabbing for her phone. Dozens of Tumblr, Twitter, and TikTok notifications sprang to view on her screen— she opened the most recent one from a mutual on Twitter that linked to a TikTok video.
“ 2Blessed2BeStressed, @thescarlettdavid: @sunnylittledragon looks like u got a battle on ur hands, better u than me! #TikTok https://vm .tiktok. com/… .. ”
It was Bach, a concerto that Yang had played many times before, but the parts were swapped. It took her a moment longer than she was willing to admit to realize that the cello was playing the violin part, stretching down the fingerboard into the upper register of the instrument and then dipping deep into the low tones as they leapt across octaves to follow the melodic line. Yang’s left hand twitched, fingering phantom notes as she imagined the passionate vibrato that ran through the cello line.
Keen silver eyes watched her as she listened to the fierce, expressive rendition again. Ruby had wrestled Zwei into her arms and now held him against her chest, her wide grin echoed by the corgi’s goofy panting face. After giving Yang another minute to fully take in the effect of the video, she spoke up. “They’re really good. And they know your style, they’re testing your flexibility.” Ruby didn’t need to mention one person they both knew who had done the exact same thing when given an opportunity.
“I’m still not getting my hopes up. I need more proof. For now it’s enough that they’re still engaging with me. Maybe they will tell me who they are on their own, if they get more comfortable…” Yang bit her lip, stubbornly stomping down on the leaping of her heart and mind.
“Well I don’t have to wait around and find out.” Ruby arched her eyebrows at her sister, her expression pure, irrepressible mischief. “I’m going to pester Weiss about it. Winter isn’t the most open person on the planet, especially about her favorite not-quite-client, but if anyone can get information from her it’s Weiss.”
Alarm flared in Yang’s chest. “Ruby, please don’t! I don’t want it to get back to her, I don’t want her to think—“
“Think what? That you still care? That you don’t blame her for what happened? That you’d do anything if it meant you could talk to her again?” Ruby’s voice was sharp with contained frustration, not necessarily directed at Yang but tangled up in the whole complex situation. She grimaced, giving her sister an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I know you’ve been working through so much. I’m sure she has too. It’s just so frustrating.”
“I don’t want to scare her off. If she had wanted to…” Emotion caught in Yang’s throat and she glanced down at the phone in her hand. “…If she had wanted to talk to me about it, surely she would have reached out before now. She could have called, written, hell, even texted…”
Zwei groaned as Ruby rubbed his ears in just the right spot, but the woman’s face was fixed with contemplation. “Maybe she just couldn’t find the words? It might seem straightforward enough looking back on it now, but you remember the media circus after the trial. It seems like half the news outlets in the country thought she was at least partially to blame for what happened—“
“Bastards.”
“Absolutely. But a lot happened in a short period of time. Last I heard from Winter, Blake had moved back to London to be with her parents. Everyone heals at their own pace.” With her name spoken aloud, suddenly the possibility of Blake as the mysterious musician seemed very real. Reality twisted, barrel-rolled, and realigned itself to accommodate this new path.
Yang sighed. “Have I mentioned recently how annoying it is that you are so reasonable and sensible all the time?”
“At least once a week. But I’m definitely not reasonable and sensible all the time. Yesterday I spent half an hour wandering around in the grocery store because I couldn’t remember if endive was a vegetable or a fish and I was too embarrassed to ask someone.” Dropping Zwei on the floor, Ruby stood and brushed loose corgi hair off of her t-shirt. “You take your time. And don’t worry, my inquiries will be discreet. I am just physically incapable of leaving well enough alone.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Ruby snatched a pillow off the bed and bludgeoned Yang in the face with it, scampering out the door with Zwei yapping at her heels before Yang could retaliate.
“Sleep with one eye open, brat!” The malice of the threat was significantly reduced by the fact that Yang could barely speak through her laughter.
Yang got up and went through her morning routine with a considerable bounce in her step. Her head felt light, and she caught herself hummaning the concerto as she brushed her teeth and washed her face.
Yang recorded her own duet video that morning, delighting in the way the tones of her practice violin complimented the sound quality of the cello even on the small speakers of her smartphone. She practiced on a violin that had belonged to her mom, Summer, and the old wood had a voice that spoke to decades of the passionate study of art. Yang felt driven to prove that she could meet her new friendly rival on an even playing field, in classical forms in addition to contemporary pop-culture pieces.
That evening, Yang got a text message from Weiss.
Weiss : Where the hell did that come from?? If I know you had it in you I would have been booking you for recording months ago.
Yang : If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know either.
Yang : I guess it helps to be properly motivated.
Weiss : Fuck. Well, I guess I’d better thank your motivation. Buckle up buttercup, we’re going to get you back in concert yet.
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Over the next two weeks, Yang’s life found a new pattern. Her TikTok friend(?) was reluctant to respond to DMs, but never turned down an opportunity to duet with Yang or challenge her with a complex piece. They traded back and forth, communicating entirely through text commentary in videos and the descriptions of each post. Schoenberg, as Yang started to call the other creator, swapped easily between the cello and piano, an eccentric sense of humor evident as slim tan fingers introduced lines from John Williams compositions into the solemn structures of Beethoven, or drew the familiar melody of Brittany Spears’ acclaimed masterwork “Not a Girl, Not yet a Woman” from the sonorous strings of the cello.
The unexpected collaboration between the two musicians exploded across the realms of multiple social media platforms, even beyond Yang’s own fan base and the musical community. Their rendition of Dueling Banjos as duet for cello and violin ended up on the feel-good section of the Today Show, and for the first time Yang didn’t feel a swell of helpless rage at being used as a puff piece. The focus wasn’t on Yang as a miraculous amputee, it was on the music they were making together. The experience was shockingly validating.
Yang’s fans speculated and debated about the two of them. Fanfiction was definitely written, some of it more tasteful than others according to Penny, who apparently enjoyed watching dumpster fires.
“Some of them think Schoenberg is a boy, some think they’re a girl. Some don’t bother with gender, or even a face. It’s fascinating.” The bassist slurped happily at her bowl of ramen, oblivious of the looks she was drawing with her mezzo forte discussion of RPF works involving one of her close friends. The restaurant was bustling, but her clear voice cut through the hubbub like a hot knife through butter. Penny was supremely unbothered, as were the rest of her bandmates, though Yang sank a little further into her chair and tucked her chin into the collar of her flannel.
It was the night before their gig in Portland and they were enjoying celebratory ramen and beer; The Maidens were booked to play a ballroom that doubled as a concert venue, the tickets had sold out in record time and the organizer had asked them if they’d be willing to pay a second show the next night to meet the demand. Coupled with Yang’s recent explosion of internet fame, spirits were high. Even Weiss was smiling and laughing along with the group, sporting the slight flush that the smallest amount of alcohol brought to her cheeks. Ruby was half in the blonde’s lap, trying to convince Weiss that it would be an amazing idea to book the whole ramen restaurant after the second show so they could invite all of their friends. Renting a party alpaca might also have been mentioned.
Extricating herself from Ruby’s hold with a request for another pitcher of beer, Weiss slid over next to Yang. The look in her eyes meant business, even slightly dulled by indulgence and serotonin. Weiss pitched her voice low enough that only Yang could hear her, though Nora and Penny were well distracted by cheering Ren on as he loaded seven spice powder into his noodles. “Have you thought about what I said about getting back into the concert scene?”
Yang sipped her water, trying to organize her jumbled brain. “Not all that much, to be honest. I mean, I don’t think I’d be opposed to it any more. Before, it felt a little bit too much like a sideshow act. Like people would be coming to see my prosthetic more than they’d be coming to see me. Now?” She watched as her sister returned with a full pitcher, sloshing a bit in spite of her painstaking pace. “I think I could do it. Yeah. But I don’t know about doing it by myself.”
The look on Weiss’ face was enigmatic, but her deep blue eyes sparked with something akin to the mischief that Ruby wore like a second skin. “Oh, you wouldn’t be by yourself.” Then the small woman scooted back next to Ruby and was engaged in lively conversation before Yang could ply her with any more questions.
As one of The Maiden’s two (2) roadies— the other being Ren, and no, he didn’t have a choice in the matter either— Yang was busy the whole next day with set up at the ballroom, chasing down replacements for forgotten equipment, and coordinating with their hotel for an extra night to account for the extended run.
They had upgraded to a hotel from the rumpus room in the basement of Jaune and Pyrrha’s little bungalow after the first two gigs in Portland. The general consensus was that it was easier to perform if they didn’t all need extensive chiropractic work from sleeping on leaky air mattresses, and, now that they were actually making money, the hotel counted as a business expense. It was also clear that Weiss was delighted not to have to share a bathroom with Nora, if given the option.
Yang found herself ruminating on the cryptic allusions to potential performances and unnamed accompaniment. She had felt apprehensive of playing in public for so long, even as she shared her music and innermost thoughts with the whole internet through her social media accounts. The separation provided by the screen had given Yang a necessary security blanket while she felt most vulnerable. She had given interviews, live and recorded, but without words or editing or filters it would just be what she brought to the stage. To her surprise, the thought didn’t disquiet her— she felt the electric buzz of excitement at the possibility of playing live again.
Even if she didn’t have a set date, or knowledge of whatever else her former (and, it would seem, current) manager had planned, the fact that she was looking forward to the opportunity filled Yang with hope.
______________________________________________________________
The contract laid out before her detailed a three performance concert series at two venues in Portland and one in Seattle, to take place in a little under four months time. Yang glanced from the paper to Weiss’ neutral expression then back to the paper. There was no clarification on who she would perform with, though it did say the headliners would be accompanied by the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Philharmonic. The concerts would be in benefit of an organization that provided housing and food security to low-income families in the Pacific Northwest, and would feature orchestral arrangements of classical and contemporary music.
It was not a lot of time to arrange such a large event, and Yang was honestly quite impressed it had gotten so far along in the short time since Weiss had put a concert on her radar. Though, knowing how Weiss worked, it wouldn’t be out of character for her to have started checking venues the second Yang started trending on TikTok and Twitter.
Wordlessly, Yang snagged a pen from the cup on the desk and signed on the dotted line. If Weiss thought they could sell these venues, they could sell these venues. As innovative as she was, she was not a gambler, and Yang knew that the wheels that were now in motion were the kind that would carry her through any possible complication or setback.
So there was nothing left to do but rehearse. And rehearse. And rehearse. The battery limitation on her concert prosthetic forced Yang to take breaks intermittently, though after a few harried emails to Pietro a longer cable arrived in the mail that allowed her to continue to practice even while she was recharging. After that, it was only muscle cramps, fatigue, and the insistence of her father and sister that kept Yang from playing around the clock.
Though she kept up her posting schedule on her various social media accounts, Yang took a hiatus from video game streaming until after the concerts. She was gratified when the response she received from her community was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, several of her Twitch subscribers going so far as to set up a Discord server to plan travel and lodgings to see her performances.
The intervening time passed in the blink of an eye, preoccupation with learning her own parts distracting Yang right up until she realized she needed to pack for the trip. Ruby and Tai were accompanying her on the first leg up to Portland, ostensibly to enjoy a weekend out of town where neither of them had to work, but Yang had a sneaking suspicion they were there for moral support. She couldn’t truthfully say she didn’t need it.
She had never experienced stage fright before. Yang had been playing music almost for as long as she could remember— their’s was an intensely musical family, with Summer employed as a concert violinist and Tai working as a luthier, and when Yang showed an early aptitude, with Ruby following hot on her heels, their parents were quick to encourage them. Performing was in her blood and the stage gave Yang energy in a way she couldn’t quite express, so all of her previous pre-show jitters had added up to her excitement at getting to do the thing she loved more than anything else in the world.
That excitement was present now, but it was accompanied by a sour note, a twist in the gut and a looming malaise that tainted the feeling of joy. She was quiet for the whole drive up to Portland, gazing out the window and unconsciously kneading the dense tissue of her amputation. Phantom limb pain had been nagging her for over a week, exacerbated by muscle tension brought on by extensive practicing, and Yang winced as her nerves lit up with a blaze of burning in the arm that no longer existed.
“Do you want to stop and get something at Starbucks?” Her dad’s suggestion carried an underlying do you need to move around to take your mind off of it?
Yang shook her head, then changed her mind. “Actually, that would be nice.”
Twenty minutes later she was standing in the brisk September air and sipping her pumpkin spice Frappuccino, and she had to admit that it helped. Ruby stepped up onto the curb next to her, contemplating the strip mall wasteland that stretched out in front of them as she also savored her espresso drink. Tai was stretched out in the back seat of the SUV, his long legs dangling out the open passenger-side door as he caught a quick nap.
“You’re going to be amazing.” Yang glanced at Ruby, wondering if her tension was that apparent. The shorter woman flashed half a grin in her direction but otherwise kept her attention on the Super Cuts in the middle distance. “I don’t think Dad knows, he just thinks it’s your arm acting up. But I can see it. You’re allowed to be scared, Yang.”
“I never used to be.”
“A lot has changed since then.” Ruby stirred the dregs of her iced caramel macchiato with her straw, the plastic-on-plastic sound grating at Yang’s eardrums in the relative quiet of the moment. “What you are doing now is so much more than just playing some nice music for a big group of people. You never had to prove anything before, not to yourself or to your audience. You are braver now than you have ever had to be before. I’m so proud of you. I’m so glad you’re my sister.”
What could Yang do in response to that? She grabbed Ruby and hugged her tight, as much to cover the tears that welled up in her eyes as to express her appreciation for her sister’s empathy and support. Then she noogied her captive sibling with the cold, wet bottom of her Frappuccino cup, just to prove that she was still the big sister and had the last word. Their whooping and tussling woke Tai up, and they all piled back in the car for the last hour and a half to the city.
______________________________________________________________
The posters all said “Yang Xiao Long and Special Guest”, featuring one of the headshots Weiss had insisted on having taken months ago. In the photo Yang sat easily in a plain wooden chair, bow and the neck of her violin held in her left hand with the instrument propped on her knee and her concert prosthetic resting easily on her right thigh. It neither glorified her assistive device or hid it from view, and Yang knew that Weiss was making a point in selecting that particular promotional shot.
The only indication of the “Special Guest” was a cello leaning opposite Yang on the poster, edited in to look as though it had been in the room when the photo was taken.
The cello hovered in the back of Yang’s mind, but she wouldn’t allow herself to consider it, or it’s implications. As she checked her performance clothes in the full-length mirror in her hotel room, tamed her wild golden mane, and applied minimal stage makeup, Yang fervently thought of anything other than that cello. She joked with Ruby when they met up in the elevator on the way down to the lobby, squashing down the unknown quantity with a known one. She and Ruby had tormented and encouraged each other through countless recitals and concerts, sharing a kinship that extended beyond their DNA to the very essence of their souls. They were musicians, and the older and younger sister stood on equal footing in the realm of performance.
When he caught sight of Yang and Ruby stepping out of the elevator, Tai pushed himself out of the armchair where he had been waiting and strode over to them. He grinned with unabashed pride at his daughters, then held out a hand to his oldest— Yang handed Ruby her violin case then placed her hand in his and let him spin her in a slow circle. She wore well-fitted slacks and a white cold shoulder blouse with sleeves that fluttered only as far as her elbows, so the twirl was more for nostalgia’s sake than anything else, but Yang enjoyed the way her hair swirled behind her and her ankle boots clicked on the tile.
“You look like you’re ready to take on the world, Sunshine.”
“Fake it til you make it, right?”
He laughed, happiness and love glowing in his eyes like a lantern. “I think you’ve made it. Let’s get you to your adoring masses.” He took one daughter on each arm and escorted them out to the town car that waited at the curb. Yang had thought this detail was overkill, but Weiss was nothing if not exacting and she never needed to learn a lesson twice. They would be chauffeured to and from the venue, and no murderous assholes would have the opportunity to take a shot at Yang on her return to the stage. Weiss personally oversaw their transportation, completely at home in the all-leather interior of the car, unbelievably elegant, and infuriatingly smug.
The process of getting out of the car was complicated by the fact that none of them had ever been chauffeured before. Tai had a bit of confusion with the driver as they both tried to hold the door and help the other passengers out at the same time. Yang squeezed past with her violin case held protectively against her body, but she stumbled as she stepped up on the sidewalk, her toe catching on the curb.
“Careful!” A clear, lightly accented voice cut through the dueling politeness and the street noise, and a slender arm shot into Yang’s vision to steady her. A distantly familiar voice. An immediately familiar arm. One that Yang had seen every day for the last six months, elegant fingers she had studied to the smallest detail as they danced across ivory keys or pressed to taut strings.
Inexorably, her gaze followed the line of the arm to the shoulder, the shoulder to the collarbone, the collarbone up the throat, and into the achingly lovely face of Blake Belladonna.
The world dropped away. Yang stood in a sphere of perfect silence that contained only the rushing of her blood to her head and the impossible reality of Blake, still holding Yang’s bicep and smiling shyly up at her. Blake’s hair was cropped into a bob now, a stark contrast to the waist-length inky waterfall she had sported when they first met. And there was a presence about her, something that spoke to the immensity of the journey that she had taken, ultimately leading her to this moment.
“Hi Blake.” Yang’s voice felt thick and slow in her throat. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. People will talk.”
Blake laughed, a pure sound of unbridled joy, and threw her arms around Yang.
Standing by a stage door just off a busy street in a busy city, her family and friends looking on, Yang gathered Blake against her and cried true tears of happiness into a slim shoulder clad in black silk.
______________________________________________________________
Author’s Notes:
-Short and sweet (for a probably-momo fic at least). I really like how this story ultimately turned out. Will I post a smutty epilogue as a reward for all of you good little beasts and ghouls? Maybe, hopefully. I still owe y’all the last two chapters of Faults Enough, so that’s where I’m going next.
-Tai’s house is on the outskirts of Salem, OR, in the direction of the little town of Dallas. The Willamette Valley is truly one of the most beautiful places in the country.
-Yang Xiao Long, bisexual disaster and Twitch streaming heart throb. This AU is just so goofy.
-Bach Concerto for Cello and Violin
-In case you were wondering, endive is an abomination.
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1TeaBinch on Chapter 1 Fri 03 Dec 2021 03:53AM UTC
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Last Edited Sun 13 Mar 2022 06:11AM UTC
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